Recently, we’ve had the Credit Crunch. Now we may be facing the Energy Crunch. But the Government appears not to have any long-term strategy to deal with the potential crisis, and the rail industry is only just showing signs of acknowledging the situation.
Meanwhile, across the Channel, our colleagues in France continue to develop rail and metro systems under a strategy that means by 2020, none of their trains or trams will have to rely on fossil fuels.
In France, much of the mainline and high-speed rail network is already electrified, with around 80 per cent of electricity from nuclear and much of the remainder hydro-electric.
Eurostar journeys on the new High Speed 1 from St Pancras are now ‘carbon neutral.’ But there appears little prospect of the rest of our rail system following suit quickly, even when faced with a major decline in the availability of crude oil.
All suggestions of reviving a long-term programme of electrification have been rejected by the Government – although north of the border, the Scottish Executive plans a rolling programme.
There is now a chink of light for the rest of us, though. Network Rail’s new Strategic Business Plan reminds us that around 60 per cent of the network is still operated by diesel traction and sensibly states that “using diesel trains as mini-power plants to generate traction power appears inefficient. There are also significant benefits [of electrification] in terms of acceleration and capacity. Any proposals would need to be planned over a much longer horizon than 2014”.
Network Rail also points out: “Environmental legislation comes into force in 2012, setting tough emission targets for diesel engines. This, and concerns over the future cost of fossil fuels, may make a business case for further electrification of the network more attractive.”
But there is more to be concerned about than rising oil prices, now hovering around $100 a barrel.
German-based Energy Watch Group (EWG) recently reported that world oil production peaked in 2006 and will now drop each year.
The author, Joerg Schindler, said most alarming was the steep decline in oil production since 2006. Global oil production, currently around 80 million barrels a day (mbd), is expected to fall to 39 mbd by 2030. Worse still, his report predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production as these energy sources are also used up.
Schindler says: “The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life.”
Not everyone agrees. For example, Leo Drollas, who leads analysis and forecasting of the oil and gas market at the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London, said there are plenty of supplies and no looming
crisis.
But Jeremy Leggett, the author of a book about the moment when maximum oil production is reached, said both the UK government and the energy industry were in ‘institutionalised denial’ and that action should have been taken sooner.
He told The Guardian newspaper: “The Government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that ‘premature peak’ oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency.”
I for one – and, I suspect, many readers – would feel much happier if there was some contingency planning going on now.
EWG says actual oil production data is more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. So, while ‘official’ estimates put global reserves at equivalent to 42 years’ supply, EWG thinks the true figure is only about two-thirds of
that amount.
Whatever the state of world oil reserves, what we do know for sure is that they are finite and sooner or later will run out – Britain’s oil production has already dropped by half since 1999 – and demand from China and India is rising.
Main-line railway electrification won’t answer all the problems. But, in the right circumstances, it can reduce carbon emissions by up to 30 per cent compared with diesel traction. Moreover, electricity can be produced from far more sources – from nuclear power, coal, and renewables such as wind farms, hydro-electric plants, wave and tidal power – than can diesel or bio-diesel fuel.
And there are now concerns that production of bio fuels actually produces more carbon dioxide than they save, according to the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
It must surely make sense to reduce dependency on oil by developing an incremental programme of main-line railway electrification (as argued for and justified by a joint study between the Transport Ministry and British Rail in 1981, but killed off by Margaret Thatcher’s chief economic adviser, Professor Sir Alan Walters).
In the aviation sector, the DfT requires airports to plan ahead for 2030. The Department for Communities and Local Government is planning vast expansions in house-building up to 2026.
But when it comes to the railways, the recent High Level Output Statement looked no further ahead than Network Rail’s next ‘control period’ up to 2014. And the train operators can see no further than the end of their franchises, typically seven or eight years only.
The Energy Crunch is coming – sooner or later.
Surely the Government should be making plans now, recognising that life must go on beyond the next Network Rail control period, short-term franchises and – indeed – five-year parliaments?