When, in February 2018, the then Transport Minister Jo Johnson challenged the rail industry to report on how it could eliminate diesel-only trains to decarbonise the railway, he suggested battery and hydrogen trains were a ‘prize on the horizon’.
A rail industry decarbonisation taskforce, set up to respond to this call, published an interim report in January 2019 followed by a final report in July. This concluded decarbonisation can only be achieved with a ‘judicious mix’ of electric, battery and hydrogen traction and recommended that this mix should be determined by a Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy.
On page 34 of the taskforce’s 66-page final report there is a reference to a large-scale electrification programme of as much as 4,250 route kilometres, although there was no mention of which lines might be electrified – other than a statement that electrification was needed on ‘intensively-used lines’.
There was no indication of the constraints of battery and hydrogen traction until page 38, though this did not mention that, to store the same amount of energy, a hydrogen train’s fuel tank has to be seven times the size of that of a diesel train. Instead there was a table categorising the capab…
