You know, there’s an old saying “A fool and his money are soon parted”. Let’s hope this is the case for these rich but addled folks like Richard Branson. Now he’s pushing this “green train” concept, as if running a diesel powered train with a 20% biodiesel blend makes such “green”…
Claims Sir Richard “If… we can convert our Voyager fleet to run on B20 biodiesel, we could cut our CO2 emissions by up to 14 per cent.”
No, you can’t. The production of so-called biofuels from food crops takes a whole lot of energy to till, plant, fertilize, harvest, process, etc the seed into a compatible fuel. It takes more energy to make biodiesel from soy or canola than it does to produce synthetic diesel from coal.
Besides, what you allegedly gain in faux carbon neutrality you lose in a very real increase in NOX, a more potent greenhouse gas by far than CO2.
G’day, Y’all,
I think this is called tunnel (motor) vision. He can’t seem to see outside the range of his vision. He must feel as if the biofuels were just put at some spot for his use at no charge.
Since he is rich and successful, people will believe him. Here in Atlanta, GA we have a nut named Ted Turner who is known as the Mouth of the South.
The way to reduce all the emissions is to make the trains all electric powered by hundreds of compact, safe nuclear power plants along the right of way.
He can mount photovoltaic panels on the roof to futher power the electric trains.
That’s fine in theory, but I’m not sure how practical solar power is in the UK, with our damp climate!
However, given that the Voyager trains are diesel electric and spend a considerable amount of their time running on lines that are already electrified, all they need to do is fit a pantograph and a rectified to one car and - Bob’s your uncle - you’ve got an electro diesel hybrid train that can draw power from the wires.
Small safe nuclear power plants eh? Well that is part of the route China is taking, but it’s still more complicated.
No, solar power would not work in GB any better than it would in Seattle or Chicago or Boston, all places with lots of gray sky and rain for at least a good part of the year. Now you want to try solar power, how about the Australian Outback or Saharan Africa, there’s some sun!
As for the nuclear power plants, well there’s still the issue of waste, and that stuff will kill you a lot quicker than global warming if it gets into your food, water, or air supply. This can of course be taken care of, here in the USA, nuclear waste is shipped regularly and to my knowledge nothing bad has come of that shipping.
However there’s one huge drawback to nuclear energy: cost! I’m not just talking about the cost of building (including securing the cores reliably in a post-9/11 world) but think of the legal issues and the millions it will cost.
No new nuclear power plant has been built in the USA for years (since 3-mile Island I seem to remember.)
Is that because nuclear power is unsafe? Not particularly, American-designed reactors are far far safer and more stable than their Russian cousins.
Is it because people belive nuclear power to be unsafe? Oh yes, after being brought up thinking that the same ideas that made possible our nation’s power was also supposed to rain down horrible (yet avoidable if you had a sturdy desk!) destruction on everyone.
Think of the litigation, the politics the insanity if people tried to build a new Nuclear power plant.