The path is clear, though no eye can see the course laid down long before (Peter Gabriel)
Railways have always been an environmentally friendly form of transport, at least so I often read from an industry quietly confident in its secure green house. While this may be true, at least since the end of steam, most progress since has been from electrification, the energy suppliers to the national grid, and ever-rising passenger numbers to give a better figure per passenger. Let’s deal with the last one first; not any more.
GRID CLEANING
Electric trains are clean, at least at the point of use, but how clean depends on what is being used to provide electricity to the National Grid, incidentally another leftover from a nationalised past. We have all heard how coal is almost a fuel of the past in the UK, and that this represents the crowning achievement of UK decarbonisation. What we hear less about is how that has been achieved, which is a drop in demand from 40.9 Gigawatts (GW) in January 2013 to 33.4GW in January this year (Figure 1). Summer figures follow this, typically 6GW lower. In short, the decline in coal mirrors the decline in demand, and you stop using coal first. What is less well known is …
