The government is committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 – impressed?
Back in March 2011 I referred to carbon reduction as ‘Rail’s Big Chance’, since battling for rail investment with straightforward business cases was much harder than playing the game with green cards. In that game railways held all the cards, but since then we have been playing the game with deuces while dropping our aces on the floor. It took years to get the message across for electrification, only for Network Rail to blow it away on Great Western. Having realised masts don’t actually need to be anchored to the earth’s core, electrification is back on the agenda, but under threat from hydrogen. Roger Ford’s first ‘Informed Sources’ law is never to assume railway policy is rational, but neither is climate policy.
POWER BILL
Bill Gates has written a book ‘How to avoid a climate disaster’, which makes the point that the only logical target on carbon emissions is zero. He’s a clever lad (although I bet he’d struggle to find an intermittent earth fault on a Class 47), and he’s right. All the carbon dioxide emitted as a result of Voyagers running under the wires, Uckfield line DMUs preserved by the Office of Rail and Road’s thir…
