Much ado about nothing. It wouldn’t drive freight lines to bankruptcy.
(It’s NOT even boiling a frog at all)
If you see what I mentioned above, year 2100 is a lot of time for freight lines to electrify. It would
begin in a future era (maybe beyond our lifetimes) where it’s practical. Possibly only 1/10th of the lines need catenary, if you use strategic sections, combined with tri-mode locomotives like battery freight locomotives.
USA is
about to start battery-electric freight trains! And
BNSF begin trials shortly!
Read my lips: United States of America!
Using battery freight trains!
Combine one diesel and one battery (two locomotives), and you save 15% of your diesel costs, and pollute less. Even when hauling the dead weight around, the numbers actually works out. They’re doing it on their own economic accord!
"Adding even one battery-powered locomotive to the train could reduce the consist’s total fuel consumption by up to 15 percent, according to Alan Hamilton, general manager of systems engineering at GE Transportation. Given that diesel prices globally have hovered between $2 to $4 per gallon for most of the last decade, an operator could save tens of thousands of dollars per consist on its annual fuel bill. “It’s a big deal,” Hamilton says. “Fuel costs are typically the largest component in a rail operator’s costs.”
At that point, you only need a indirect forcing (like simply high carbon taxes, or high diesel cost, or other disincentive, which YOU may or maybe not agree with BUT that is besides the point) and they’ll just do so on their own accord, thanks to such indirect forces. One thing after another, by 2100, the freights may be using 90%-98% less fuel with just 1%-5% catenary by mainline length.
With 0% catenary, battery can still save diesel.
A theoretical multi-decade cheap freight electrification plan:
- You begin by adding a battery locomotive to the existing diesel freight consist. Cheap.
15% savings in diesel.
- Next decade, you add tiny bits of catenary at the steeper grades (high power) and key sections to ease load on diesel and batteries.
30% savings in diesel.
- Then a future decade, lengthen catenary for more inflight-refueling (recharging on the fly) along sections that has higher-power use in historical analytics.
50% savings in diesel.
- Then a future decade, your freight network is 1% to 5% catenary, and battery tech is good
90%-98% savings in diesel.
(replace numbers with different estimates, but you get the idea of the “progression”)
See....cheap.
Heck, if you wanted to take it easy on the freight companies
, capital at mere tens to hundred millions dollars per year in a “slow electrify” (far less than one billion per year), even if laggardly beginning 2050 and end 2100. I bet it even with Invisible Hand or market forces alone, it will happens faster than that. But I just give a dumbfoundedly conservative slow scenario example. They already currently spend way more than that per year in rail improvements now. The cost of continuing to use diesel will probably continually increase over the century in various ways.
So not an edict to freight companies to stop using fuels, but simply slowly making it cheaper to use other methods than diesel, via a wide variety of government-initiated techniques. Theoretically, it can even be externally forced (e.g. Europe putting a tax on goods transported by diesel in other countries), so we may not even need our government to do the “forcing” of the economics for the business case of gradual freight electrification. Who knows? You may or may not agree with whatever the world dishes, but it’s all, combined, but guaranteed to make diesel costly by 2100 even without Canada lifting a finger. (We should “help along”, though).
That’s what I meant by “force” — economic forces included.
I suspect you took issue to my phraseology “forcing the freights”, when it’s far less nefarious and more mundane economics. Fun sidetrack, and all but almost guaranteed to happen.
Again, much ado about nothing, because I threw a generous number example out there (“2100”). And I didn’t put it to that, even. Feel free to replace the number with 2150 or 2200, or panic rush completion to 2040, but the Canadian freights aren’t going to be using 100% diesel in Year One Million, anyway... (Just throwing out a “sky is blue” obvious statement). The trend will be towards decreased diesel %. Realistically it will happen faster, because of the above.
IMHO, the faster this tech matures, the better.
