(There is an addition to this article here)
I’ve proposed to a number of people over the past few months that what needs to happen in order to limit our consumption of oil *and* our emissions of climate-change inducing fumes, is to electrify our transportation networks.

With regular joes like myself, I usually get a fairly positive “ya, that makes sense” kind of response.

With other people “in the know”, like rail workers or business people or general cynics (not that there’s anything wrong with cynics), I get the “that is wayyy too expensive”… or “there isn’t enough electricity”… or it (passenger) would never be used, etc.

Well. Today, I’m going to poke a few holes in that anti-electrification/railfreight argument. I’ll see over time if anyone can come around and just try to fill them in. (This is similar to Al Gores approach in The Inconvenient Truth… what can I say, the most boring man ever in the White House actually inspired me! ;))

So. One main facet of my thought on efficient transport is electrified railroad. I’ve asked around and the response is generally pretty negative mainly because “short line” railroads can’t afford the capital expenditure that would be required to electrify a line. I’ll accept the capital expenditure argument for now… though when it comes down to money… the solutions are even more simple.

This post, though deals with the issue of electricity supply.

Exactly how much energy does it cost to run an electric freight train? Would we need a whole bunch of Nuclear Power plants like France and Japan?

The answer…

Absolutely not.

Electric rail does not actually consume a great amount of electricity considering its transportation capabilities, and in terms of net energy consumption (in MegaJoules) it consumes roughly half that of road/trucking for freight and passenger service. The Nukes are needed, mainly, for the highspeed (TGV) and other incredibly fast services… but as we’ll see, even those aren’t insurmountable.

So.

Lets get to the point.

How much electricity would we need, on Vancouver Island, to run our existing shortline railroad.

It’s pretty simple math.

A: Electric Rail Consumption is based on KiloWatt Hours/KM (KMh/km)
B: The E&N shortline is approximately 290KM of track
C: Most Electricity Generation stations are measured in GigaWatt Hours/year

So, we need to know:

#1: How many KWh/km does an average electric pass/freight train consume?
#2: How many KM does the rail traffic actually put on in a year
#3: How many GWH/yr does the rail traffic consume.

OK… (if you just want to know the answer, feel free to scroll down to the bottom )

#1… The UK put out a great report on their rail networks consumption and emissions. On Page 13 is a very handy table detailing electrical consumption of various “Classes” of engines (which simply means different types and manufacturers).

I’ll use Class 92 Engines which are very versatile and incredibly powerful (over 5000hp). They are the engines used in the “Chunnel” to transport freight and passengers between England and France, so we can be quite sure that these trains are very capable of pulling very heavy loads (they also travel at nearly 150KM/h, which is far more than what we require on Vancouver Island)

According to the UK document, these trains consume between 21 and 41KWh/mile (depending on freight load/weight).

That works about very roughly to 13-26KWh/km

#2 Next, we need to know travel distances. In 2000, there was a report put up on Trainscan which gives some insight on rail traffic on the E&N, it gives a good overview of the daily routine.

Here’s the breakdown by services per week.
VIAs E&N Passenger rail service puts on 3,154km between Courtenay/Victoria
RailAmerica (now ICF/SRY) logs about 450km of freight between Courtenay/Victoria
and on the Port Alberni stub, which stopped service in the late 90s, around 840km (based on a 140KM roundtrip 6days/wk)

Total mileage per week?
4444km

that’s 231,088km per year

——————————————-RESULTS—————————————-

#3 So now, all we need to do is multiply the kWh/km * km per year… and we get our answer…

To power the entire E&N shortline, all year, with regular service as was happening in the late 1990s… the electrical requirements (using very overpowered freight/passenger engines) (drumroll)

3.0 to 6.0GWh per year

It’s always good to be safe… so lets say 8GWh per year… that will give us a little room for “growth”.

So… 8GWh per year. But how much is that really?

Well, if you read my earlier post on Alternative Energy and BC Hydro yesterday, and followed the links you would have ended up here. A handy little chart detailing power generation of proposed facilities approved by BC Hydro.

Lets take one plant close to my hometown, the Franklin River Run-of-River Small Hydro project.

It’s rated capacity?

19GWh per year.

That’s over 2x the amount needed to run the entire rail system on the Island for the year.

But wait… what if we want “rapid transit” on the Island. That will likely require *even more* electricity.

Well, what other plants do we have proposed coming online on Vancouver Island?

From North to South….

Songhees Creek Hydro Project @ Port Hardy 61GWh/year
Victoria Lake Hydroelectric Project @ Port Alice 39GWh/year
Raging River 2 @ Port Alice 13GWh/year
Clint Creek Hydro Project @ Woss 27GWh/year
Barr Creek Hydroelectric Project @ Tahsis 15GWh/year
McKelvie Creek Hydroelectric Project @ Tahsis 14GWh/year
Gold River Power Project (using Biomass) @ Gold River 745GWh/year

So what was that about a shortage of power on the Island?

The current proposals for new power on Vancouver Island total 914GWh / year of capacity.

8GWh is under 1% of that.

And that would, easily, move most, if not all of the current medium-haul transport truck traffic off of the highways as well as give enough headroom for a little bit of expanded passenger service.

Dedicate 5% of that new power (~95GWh/yr) to electrified rail, and you would quadruple the amount of “pulling power” on the rail… Victoria and Nanaimo could likely have LRT and/or Electric trolleys… and all freight on the Island could move by rail.

10%… we could have our own TGV on the Island.

Now get back to that original 8GWh number… a a little river like this can produce double the amount of electricity to power an entire shortline railroad. How many little rivers like this are there on Vancouver Island? in BC? 10s? 100s? 1000s?

Electricity is the key to our oil-free future.

The right kind of motivation will easily move the money to make it happen.

Next, I’d like to look at electrifying the entire Canadian rail system. (small goals, I know)

(There is an addition to this article here)

In case you forgot or have been smothered by MSM coverage of the Israel/Lebanon conflict…

Iran took another step towards becoming another footnote in the transformation from the old to the “new Middle East”.

Today, the UN Security Council issued a resolution setting a deadline of one month for Iran to stop all nuclear enrichment work or face the possibility of economic sanctions.

Resolution 1696 is not yet on the UNSC website but it should be here soon.

According to the BBC it mentions Chapter 7, which is the key to beginning the process of sanctions and… eventually, military action.

So here’s the interesting part.

The reason the Resolution has been passed is because Iran never responded to the offer the UN made to it regarding incentives and whatnot to have it stop enrichment of Uranium. The Iranians were supposed to respond by the end of July.

Iran was then refferred to the UNSC on July 12.

What else happened on July 12?

Hezbollah fighters based in southern Lebanon launch Katyusha rockets across the border with Israel, targeting the town of Shlomi and outposts in the Shebaa Farms area.
In a cross-border raid, guerrillas seize two Israeli soldiers before retreating back into Lebanon, insisting on a prisoner exchange and warning against confrontation. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert describes the capture of the soldiers as “an act of war”.

We all know that Hezbollah = Syria/Iran foreign policy

We all know that Israel = US foreign policy

So is what we are seeing right now between Israel and Hezbollah really the first shots of the war between the US and Syria/Iran?

I’d say, at this point… the answer is much closer to being “yes” than no.

The United States is playing along with the UN route as Israel “softens up” the target in Lebanon and uses the opportunity to perhaps gain some more concrete Military Intelligence on the Syrian and Iranian sides.

Along the same lines, if Hezbollah really is an Iranian mouthpeice, then we have seen the Iranian regimes reaction to it’s referral to the UNSC. No doubt Israels response was a little more than they bargained for, but they seem to be holding their own anyway.

(Statements like “the best Arab troops we’ve ever faced” does not bode well for the US for an ground attack on Iran or Syria considering Hezbollah are all trained in those two countries.)

Iran has said they will respond to the package of incentives originally offered in June by August 22nd. The new resolution by the UN gives a deadline of August 31 for the Iranians to stop all enrichment work and comply with inspections.

I don’t expect all this talk of “lasting solutions” by Rice and Bush and Blair and company to lead anywhere before those two dates. In the meantime, more Lebanese civilians will die… as will Israeli civilians (though on a scale an order of magnitude smaller… and in much smaller proportion to Israeli military deaths)

Good news from my neck of the woods.

Last week, BC Hydro announced a new generation projectrs from Independant Power Producers.

Political objections about allowing business to control electrical energy resources aside… it *is* good that new generating capacity will be coming online in BC, and the majority of it is from renewable sources.

A list detailing the new electricity generation projects is here.

The vast majority are hydro projects of varying sizes, but none large scale dams… mostly small dams and run-of-river projects.

However, the biggest projects span a variety of technologies, including Wind, Hydro, Biomass and Coal.

In upcoming posts, I’ll detail a few of the more interesting projects but for now some highlights for me are:

The Dokie (180MW) and Bear Mountain Wind (120MW) projects… generating 536GWh/yr and 371GWh/yr respectively.

The Tumbler Ridge Coal/Biomass project is, I believe the largest project of its’ kind in BC (I’ll have to check that)

And, in my town of Port Alberni, the local Hupacasath First Nations is building on their successful China Creek run-of-river project with another run-of-river project nearby on the Franklin River. It will generate a similar amount of power as China Creek (6.65MW, 19GWh/yr). It’s very nice to see this kind of long-term, environmentally sound thinking right here in my City (which itself is a little less progressive).

Noticeably absent from this list from BC Hydro is…..

Natural Gas fired Co-Generation plants.

And that… is a good thing.

But the news isn’t all good, I’ll delve a little more into that in upcoming posts.

Cheers!

Hugo Chavez was in Moscow yesterday

He signed or completed a number of arms deals worth over $US3 Billion.

These included a small fleet of SU-30 fighter Jets as well as a large number of helicopters.

Perhaps the most interesting facet of his trip, though, was his campaign for support of Venezuelas bid for one of the non-permanent United Nations Security Council seats when they come up for election next year.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia apparently supports this as do a number of other Eastern European nations. In the words of Mr. Putin.

Russia supports “a multipolar world”.

Imagine… Venezuela, Russia, and China, all on the UNSC… throw in an Arab country, say, the Kuwait, or the UAE, and you have a whole lot of oil oil power around that table. 3 of 4 definitely not being aligned to Washingtons views.

That country between Afghanistan and India… you know, the one that is in effect partially ruled by the Taliban/Islamic militants and was the only public outlet for the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan… well, it’s expanding it’s nuclear program.

And in a big big big way.

… the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security.

“Such a reactor could produce over 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power a modest 220 days per year,” it says. “At 4 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of over 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.”

Plutonium creates more powerful and sophisticated bombs than uranium, which is what the Pakistanis have now.

According to the report, Pakistan currently has over 30 uranium-based warheads, India has roughly the same amount of warheads, but they are plutonium. So this enhancement by Pakistan would effectively raise the bar in South Asia as they could feasibly both double the number of warheads and match or better Indias technology at the same time.

This is happening at the same time as Congress approves a major deal to share nuclear technology with India, which while it does not mention military applications, does not expressely forbid it, so the US is effectively supporting the Indian nuclear weapons effort itself.

For a completely different view, here is an interesting opinion peice from rediff:

How India surrendered the nuclear advantage

… One wonders what ‘corrective measures’ India would have a right to take if it conducted a nuclear test and the US and NSG countries stopped fuel supplies.

Will India take them to an international court? Will India wage war against the US or other NSG countries and get the fuel supply reinstated as part of war reparations? Or, will India withdraw from the safeguards agreement, in which case too it won’t get any further fuel?

After all, first the Americans said, the nuclear agreement was for building a ’strategic partnership’ with India. Saran applauded. Then the Americans said it was meant to achieve their own non-proliferation goals. Saran accepted that too. To him, it does not make sense not to accept American conditions.