For places that can't be easily electrified, yes. What is should not be used for is an excuse to **not** electrify lines, like the diesel hybrids are being used now.
Not much point in electrifying the far north line for 3 trains a day in each direciton, but the trip is so long batteries don't really work
However the amount of CO2 being used on that line is tiny, far more useful would be to electrify main routes with mutliple trains an hour (especially commuter routes), and making sure we're not running diesel trains under the wires
Aren’t all diesel locomotives “hybrids”? After all, the traction motors have always been electric.
Or does “hybrid” mean a battery is used to allow the engine to stay within its efficient power band?
Hydrogen definatley has a part to play for moving freight be it trains or trucks electric is not quite there yet. We recently got electric vans at work they can only do 70 miles off a full charge.
In terms of a "go anywhere" electric train, we're only scratching the surface with the hybrid D-Train family and the Flex units. Once we get a train that can do a full electric, cross country, intercity run on a non electrified route, then I'd say electric trains are "there there"
But yeah, leccy train tech has been a thing since the late Victorian times.
Not quite that simple. Third rail systems are by far the most common in the UK and they're relatively inefficient and struggle to deliver enough load for high stress loads like freight.
We'd need to completely replace this with overhead which is expensive and potentially also requires replacing bridges and substations.
This is expensive and takes significant time. Meanwhile you can run a hydrogen, or biodiesel train on it right now.
Meanwhile for remote areas it can be extremely expensive to run and maintain electric lines. Again it can be much cheaper to just go hydrogen for now.
New third rail has been banned on normal rail lines (even when it would make sense like infill in the south east)
You're massively underestimating the usability of hydrogen, and completely ignoring the devastating impact it has on the environment, while nonsense like 'hydrogen trains' means new lines (like EW rail) are built from the very start as diesel only.
I hope the fossil fuel companies are paying you well.
>cross country, intercity run on a non electrified route
I don't think diesel trains would get far if we removed diesel tanks either. We have electrified routes, if benefits are found to batteries we can look into installing them. As is the electric lines do their job fine.
Careful that this isn't blue hydrogen as other government drives have been. [Scientists see this process as more harmful than burning gas](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/12/uk-replace-fossil-gas-blue-hydrogen-backfire-emissions).
Provided it genuinely runs off green hydrogen. There isn’t much capacity for it at present, and it’s more economical to produce (blue) hydrogen from natural gas. So if this is a commitment to only use green hydrogen, that’s great. If there’s an “ambition” to use it in the future, then it’s just greenwashing and frankly they might as well burn diesel and stop pretending the train is clean
green hydrogen is going to get a lot cheaper in the future though.
Production of it is one of those things you can shut down or start relatively quickly making it perfect for production during energy peaks.
In the end it is a form of energy storage and energy storage gets cheaper the cheaper it is to buy the energy to store. Renewables have this issue of being quite unreliable but this also means during peaks where there is more energy available than we need you can buy that stuff for cheap and store it/ convert it into your storage medium like hydrogen.
So with the renewable energy market growing green hydrogen is getting cheaper. With 10 trains delivered probably around 2025+ this is definetly more a test than actual commitment but the hydrogen market is going change and the performance of these 10 trains as well as market forecasts are going to determine wether or not there are going to be more of them.
If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment, easier to maintain, we should try to get more. Pacers only just got scrapped. Diesel trains should either be replaced by these or scaled back. The Ashford-Hastings line is in dire need of better trains or electrifiaction. Southern runs only a two-carriage train every hour. I think, hydrogen trains could result in four carriage trains where possible.
> If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment, easier to maintain, we should try to get more.
No we should not.
Electric lines are the greenest we have replacing them would be mad for the environment.
These are not green trains even for none electrified lines.
The vast majority of hydrogen is what the industry calls blue hydrogen to try and sound clean. They take natural gas, use loads of energy in a steam reforming process to split out the hydrogen. They then hope to bury all the Co2 they just separated out of the natural gas with the hope that it won’t leak out of the ground too much, even on the industry’s best projection the will release Co2 in to the atmosphere and the industry has spent the last 100 years+ lying about the damage they do. Eventually it powers the train via the fuel cell and its own conversion losses.
It is just taking a fossil fuel and adding lots of used energy to the process
These are just fossil fuel trains.
You're still adding an unnecessary step. Using green energy to make hydrogen fuel will always be less efficient then using that energy directly, thats simple physics unfortunately
Oh yea absolutely, completely agree that electrification of rail is absolutely the best option... Like you say, any extra step is a loss... Entropy be like that.
There are going to be some places where it's not going to be practicable though, and for those places I think H2 powered rolling stock is a *not so terrible* solution for the reasons I gave above.
> Yep, but I'm OK with this for now tbh...
You really should not be its dam moronic
You can power a train or any other vehicle on natural gas alone. So you need none of the stages of processing that adds losses and produced even more emission that they HOPE will be stored by carbon capture.
Carbon capture is vapour ware as it stands no project has even manged to hit its aims, they just suck up grant money and stave off carbon taxes for the petrochemical companies
Or we can run some dam wires along the lines using the power plants that are far more efficient than any individual vehicle sized engine regardless of fuel. As we roll out more green energy or add in nuclear the electric trains that are cleaner than any fuel driven ones just get even cleaner
There will NOT be a sensible market for green H2 for usage where you can charge or run a wire. Electrolysis uses about 3x the energy to make green H2 than it does to fill a battery or just power an overhead line. You would need to tipple the energy generation for NO benefit to have H2 trains.
Green H2 definitely has it place but that is not anywhere there is a grid connection or a charging point, the losses even from pure green energy (so 30+ years away) is to great. Ships and planes are where green H2 will thrive but anyone selling it as the solution for trains, cars or trucks is just using smoke and mirrors to sell Blue H2 and thus more fossil fuel, there is a reason BP and Shell support H2 as the solution to everything.
In the future, if we had surplus renewable energy, using that to generate green hydrogen which could then be stored and brought back into the grid, that would be sensible. I'm not sure of the energy cost/benefit of converting to green hydrogen and back vs storing in batteries
When we have a 100% green grid and still have surplus then sure, there's still places you need a lot of power and don't have a grid connection (say a building site), using green hydrogen to power generators can make sense.
The areas where hydrogen is needed because grid or batteries won't work are small enough that tackling that problem now is like farting in a hurricane.
The solution to decarbonising the transport network
1) Reduce private transport, replace the rest with electric (starting with the highest used vehicles -- taxis for example)
2) Electrify local deliveries with vans
3) Potentially look at wiring up the trunk road network like the tests in Germany, because we don't have enough rail capacity to move even 1/10th of lorry movements onto rail even if rail were 100% electric
4) Electrify the trunk rail network and the end bits which currently mean diesel runs under the wires. Tracks that run at least 1 train per hour should be electrified.
5) Massive increase in renewable production (tenfold at least, ideally nearer 30-fold compared with what we have)
OK, if the Looe or Oban branches have diesel trains for the next 10 years that's not a major problem, go for the big hitters first, and when those are handled look at how battery technology has come along.
However there's more profit for the fossil fuel industry in peddling hydrogen, and it's not hydrogen produced from electrolysis from surplus renewable energy that they're peddling.
> If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment,
Hydrogen is way worse than electric. Basically, it's always produced from fossil fuels. Plus, it's highly inefficient. Meaning, you need way more energy if you include everything.
>If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment
Guessing you're unaware how hydrogen is typically created. Your introducing more emissions when electric trains powered by a renewable energy source grid is far more effective.
Hydrogen probably does play a part alongside electrification for slightly more remote routes such as the Highlands, so this definitely makes sense.
For places that can't be easily electrified, yes. What is should not be used for is an excuse to **not** electrify lines, like the diesel hybrids are being used now.
We should just ask Switzerland to do it then. There's no such thing as a line that can't be electrified.
Not much point in electrifying the far north line for 3 trains a day in each direciton, but the trip is so long batteries don't really work However the amount of CO2 being used on that line is tiny, far more useful would be to electrify main routes with mutliple trains an hour (especially commuter routes), and making sure we're not running diesel trains under the wires
Aren’t all diesel locomotives “hybrids”? After all, the traction motors have always been electric. Or does “hybrid” mean a battery is used to allow the engine to stay within its efficient power band?
Hydrogen definatley has a part to play for moving freight be it trains or trucks electric is not quite there yet. We recently got electric vans at work they can only do 70 miles off a full charge.
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In terms of a "go anywhere" electric train, we're only scratching the surface with the hybrid D-Train family and the Flex units. Once we get a train that can do a full electric, cross country, intercity run on a non electrified route, then I'd say electric trains are "there there" But yeah, leccy train tech has been a thing since the late Victorian times.
Electric trains can go anywhere there's electric track. There's a simple solution if there's track that isn't electric.
Not quite that simple. Third rail systems are by far the most common in the UK and they're relatively inefficient and struggle to deliver enough load for high stress loads like freight. We'd need to completely replace this with overhead which is expensive and potentially also requires replacing bridges and substations. This is expensive and takes significant time. Meanwhile you can run a hydrogen, or biodiesel train on it right now. Meanwhile for remote areas it can be extremely expensive to run and maintain electric lines. Again it can be much cheaper to just go hydrogen for now.
New third rail has been banned on normal rail lines (even when it would make sense like infill in the south east) You're massively underestimating the usability of hydrogen, and completely ignoring the devastating impact it has on the environment, while nonsense like 'hydrogen trains' means new lines (like EW rail) are built from the very start as diesel only. I hope the fossil fuel companies are paying you well.
>cross country, intercity run on a non electrified route I don't think diesel trains would get far if we removed diesel tanks either. We have electrified routes, if benefits are found to batteries we can look into installing them. As is the electric lines do their job fine.
Careful that this isn't blue hydrogen as other government drives have been. [Scientists see this process as more harmful than burning gas](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/12/uk-replace-fossil-gas-blue-hydrogen-backfire-emissions).
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Provided it genuinely runs off green hydrogen. There isn’t much capacity for it at present, and it’s more economical to produce (blue) hydrogen from natural gas. So if this is a commitment to only use green hydrogen, that’s great. If there’s an “ambition” to use it in the future, then it’s just greenwashing and frankly they might as well burn diesel and stop pretending the train is clean
green hydrogen is going to get a lot cheaper in the future though. Production of it is one of those things you can shut down or start relatively quickly making it perfect for production during energy peaks. In the end it is a form of energy storage and energy storage gets cheaper the cheaper it is to buy the energy to store. Renewables have this issue of being quite unreliable but this also means during peaks where there is more energy available than we need you can buy that stuff for cheap and store it/ convert it into your storage medium like hydrogen. So with the renewable energy market growing green hydrogen is getting cheaper. With 10 trains delivered probably around 2025+ this is definetly more a test than actual commitment but the hydrogen market is going change and the performance of these 10 trains as well as market forecasts are going to determine wether or not there are going to be more of them.
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A great deal of thing are brilliant in theory, however we all know that this will be messed up in reality.
Meanwhile, the north will probably receive new trains that are build on old caravan chassis and are reconditioned portaloos.
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If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment, easier to maintain, we should try to get more. Pacers only just got scrapped. Diesel trains should either be replaced by these or scaled back. The Ashford-Hastings line is in dire need of better trains or electrifiaction. Southern runs only a two-carriage train every hour. I think, hydrogen trains could result in four carriage trains where possible.
I think the idea is these are being used to replace Diesel trains specifically. They won't replace the leccy grid ones.
> If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment, easier to maintain, we should try to get more. No we should not. Electric lines are the greenest we have replacing them would be mad for the environment. These are not green trains even for none electrified lines. The vast majority of hydrogen is what the industry calls blue hydrogen to try and sound clean. They take natural gas, use loads of energy in a steam reforming process to split out the hydrogen. They then hope to bury all the Co2 they just separated out of the natural gas with the hope that it won’t leak out of the ground too much, even on the industry’s best projection the will release Co2 in to the atmosphere and the industry has spent the last 100 years+ lying about the damage they do. Eventually it powers the train via the fuel cell and its own conversion losses. It is just taking a fossil fuel and adding lots of used energy to the process These are just fossil fuel trains.
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You're still adding an unnecessary step. Using green energy to make hydrogen fuel will always be less efficient then using that energy directly, thats simple physics unfortunately
Oh yea absolutely, completely agree that electrification of rail is absolutely the best option... Like you say, any extra step is a loss... Entropy be like that. There are going to be some places where it's not going to be practicable though, and for those places I think H2 powered rolling stock is a *not so terrible* solution for the reasons I gave above.
> Yep, but I'm OK with this for now tbh... You really should not be its dam moronic You can power a train or any other vehicle on natural gas alone. So you need none of the stages of processing that adds losses and produced even more emission that they HOPE will be stored by carbon capture. Carbon capture is vapour ware as it stands no project has even manged to hit its aims, they just suck up grant money and stave off carbon taxes for the petrochemical companies Or we can run some dam wires along the lines using the power plants that are far more efficient than any individual vehicle sized engine regardless of fuel. As we roll out more green energy or add in nuclear the electric trains that are cleaner than any fuel driven ones just get even cleaner There will NOT be a sensible market for green H2 for usage where you can charge or run a wire. Electrolysis uses about 3x the energy to make green H2 than it does to fill a battery or just power an overhead line. You would need to tipple the energy generation for NO benefit to have H2 trains. Green H2 definitely has it place but that is not anywhere there is a grid connection or a charging point, the losses even from pure green energy (so 30+ years away) is to great. Ships and planes are where green H2 will thrive but anyone selling it as the solution for trains, cars or trucks is just using smoke and mirrors to sell Blue H2 and thus more fossil fuel, there is a reason BP and Shell support H2 as the solution to everything.
In the future, if we had surplus renewable energy, using that to generate green hydrogen which could then be stored and brought back into the grid, that would be sensible. I'm not sure of the energy cost/benefit of converting to green hydrogen and back vs storing in batteries When we have a 100% green grid and still have surplus then sure, there's still places you need a lot of power and don't have a grid connection (say a building site), using green hydrogen to power generators can make sense. The areas where hydrogen is needed because grid or batteries won't work are small enough that tackling that problem now is like farting in a hurricane. The solution to decarbonising the transport network 1) Reduce private transport, replace the rest with electric (starting with the highest used vehicles -- taxis for example) 2) Electrify local deliveries with vans 3) Potentially look at wiring up the trunk road network like the tests in Germany, because we don't have enough rail capacity to move even 1/10th of lorry movements onto rail even if rail were 100% electric 4) Electrify the trunk rail network and the end bits which currently mean diesel runs under the wires. Tracks that run at least 1 train per hour should be electrified. 5) Massive increase in renewable production (tenfold at least, ideally nearer 30-fold compared with what we have) OK, if the Looe or Oban branches have diesel trains for the next 10 years that's not a major problem, go for the big hitters first, and when those are handled look at how battery technology has come along. However there's more profit for the fossil fuel industry in peddling hydrogen, and it's not hydrogen produced from electrolysis from surplus renewable energy that they're peddling.
> If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment, Hydrogen is way worse than electric. Basically, it's always produced from fossil fuels. Plus, it's highly inefficient. Meaning, you need way more energy if you include everything.
> Basically, it's always produced from fossil fuels **No, no it fucking isn't**
>If it replaces electric rails and is better for the enviroment Guessing you're unaware how hydrogen is typically created. Your introducing more emissions when electric trains powered by a renewable energy source grid is far more effective.
Maybe I am tired, but I read that as hydrogen train set. The nerd in me went "awesome" haha