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Re: We Need to Electrify As Much Transportation As We Can
Author: mook
Date: 04-04-2016 - 17:51
Electric (x) vehicle (car, train, etc.) is a remote emission (not zero emission) vehicle if it's plugged into a wire to deliver the power. That may be very good for local emissions (the kind that kill you and your kids) but, depending on what charges that wire, it might be not so good for the planet (e.g., but not exclusively, GHGs) or for people living someplace else near the power plant(s). California in general has a pretty clean energy supply, even accounting for the imports, though of course some places are better than others. So remote emissions work here, since we do have really bad problems that are local emission-related. YM definitely WV.
CA has 3 or 4 (depending on weather, mainly) of the 5 worst areas in the US for "traditional" air pollutants most years. That's been the focus here for a long time, and we really can't afford to lose focus on it just because GHGs are now important too. BTW, many of the basic studies regarding GHGs date from the 1970s and 80s; the issue just didn't come to the attention of politicians until the mid-late 1990s.
I had a h*** of a time explaining that to management once the focus jumped to GHGs. Suddenly, CO2 was the only thing anybody cared about; if that's *really* all you care about (CO2e per mile or per hour), diesel is actually fairly good, but the local air quality and health impacts of it are pretty bad (it'll be a long time before most of the trucks and locomotives hit Tier 4, and it really needs to be tighter than that in places like LA).
Judicious electrification can help. It's not a universal solution. And the details are important, including not only where the power comes from but also the economic and logistical effects (engine changes at the edge of electric territory may work for Amtrak in one or two spots, but not as well for high volumes of freight trains or random local switching). Ask the Milwaukee Road, Great Northern, and others who had electric districts; once they started running diesels, the electrics went away. And the commuters Back East spent a lot of money on customized dual-power locomotives to avoid the need to "change at Harmon" or other edge points.
CA has 3 or 4 (depending on weather, mainly) of the 5 worst areas in the US for "traditional" air pollutants most years. That's been the focus here for a long time, and we really can't afford to lose focus on it just because GHGs are now important too. BTW, many of the basic studies regarding GHGs date from the 1970s and 80s; the issue just didn't come to the attention of politicians until the mid-late 1990s.
I had a h*** of a time explaining that to management once the focus jumped to GHGs. Suddenly, CO2 was the only thing anybody cared about; if that's *really* all you care about (CO2e per mile or per hour), diesel is actually fairly good, but the local air quality and health impacts of it are pretty bad (it'll be a long time before most of the trucks and locomotives hit Tier 4, and it really needs to be tighter than that in places like LA).
Judicious electrification can help. It's not a universal solution. And the details are important, including not only where the power comes from but also the economic and logistical effects (engine changes at the edge of electric territory may work for Amtrak in one or two spots, but not as well for high volumes of freight trains or random local switching). Ask the Milwaukee Road, Great Northern, and others who had electric districts; once they started running diesels, the electrics went away. And the commuters Back East spent a lot of money on customized dual-power locomotives to avoid the need to "change at Harmon" or other edge points.
