Last week's fire in the Channel Tunnel between France and England is an unfortunate reminder that energy-efficient modes of transport – such as railways and shipping – sometimes do little more than shift trucks between roads where they can mess up the environment, in more ways than one. While it wouldn't be sensible to ban lorries from the tunnel on the grounds that they have been known to burst into flames, the incident is a reminder of the Cinderella status of rail when it comes to freight.
Between 1995 and 2005, the amount of freight moving around on Europe's roads rose by 40 per cent. In contrast, railways added little to their freight traffic, although in recent years rail has made headway in some countries. In the UK, railways carry less freight now than they did in the 1970s, with twice as much freight moved by road. Is this really an environmentally wise way to move things around?
Fortunately, we don't have to resort to wild generalisations and gut feelings to confirm the environmental superiority of trains. The International Union of Railways (IUR) and the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) recently put out a small "Facts & Figures" brochure on rail transport and environment. OK, these organisations have a vested interest, but the people who put the document together wisely added some useful references; they also pepper the PDF version with links to relevant websites.
The document points out that since 1970, transport activity in the European Union rose by 185 per cent for the transport of goods and 145 per cent for the transport of people. In the EU, transport accounts for 31 per cent of final energy consumption. "Railways' share of the transport energy consumption is less than 3 per cent, while its market share is between 6 per cent (passenger) and 10 per cent (freight)."
There is a striking chart of the carbon dioxide belched into the atmosphere by freight travelling between Basel and Rotterdam. If trucks carry 100 tons (the report does not specify which tons) they release 4.7 tons of CO2. If the stuff goes on an inland waterway – perhaps that is why they chose this route as an example – the result is 2.4 tons of CO2. A train, on the other hand, produces a relatively trifling 0.6 tons.
Some of the report data comes from an interesting web site, EcoTransIT, with its own emissions calculator. Not interested in Basel to Rotterdam? Just plug in your own destinations: the site will do the calculations for you. EcoTransIT calculates that carrying 100 tons from Dover to Edinburgh, to pick a random example, produced 5.47 tons of CO2 by road and 1.99 tons by rail.
The idea behind EcoTransIT is to enable anyone "to compare the environmental impact of differing transport solutions for specific traffic flows". It is particularly aimed at "company managers, logistics operators, progressive transport planners, political decision makers, customers, NGOs and all stakeholders who are interested in calculating the environmental impact of freight transport on specific routes".
Perhaps these days of expensive oil will persuade a few more freight managers to use tools like EcoTransIT to back up their company's claims of environmental awareness. It us certainly a useful marketing tool for railway operators.
Further information:
The Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER)
http://www.cer.be/
International Union of Railways (IUR)
http://www.uic.asso.fr/
Rail Transport and Environment. Facts & Figures
http://www.cer.be/index.php?option=com_publications&task=view&id=1755&Itemid=71
EcoTransIT
http://www.ecotransit.org
Categories: Commentary ,
Comments
All comments
You need to be registered with the IET to leave a comment. Please log in or register as a new user.