Great Western Coffee Shop

Not sure where ... but I know this needs joining up to another topic ... will get back to it (of none of the other moderators / admins does)

From New Civil Engineer (https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/how-britain-could-upgrade-its-rail-network-to-replace-domestic-flights-20-04-2021/)

How far can you get from London in two and a half hours by train, or more importantly how many constituencies can you get to?

London to Manchester is just over 2 hours by train, can't really imagine it affecting any other domestic UK routes of any significance.

Glasgow/Edinburgh closer to 5 hours by train, against 80 minutes in the air.

This appeared on Twitter this morning, signs of a trend perhaps

German Aviation and Deutsche Bahn sign MoU to move 4.3 million domestic flights to rail

https://twitter.com/davidzipper/status/1384119582068154377?s=21

Such a suggestion only works from a traveller's perspective if the end-to-end journey time and cost is considered and documented. On the UK mainland UK for distances up to 200-250 miles where an 'intercity' type service is available rail will frequently win on time but lose on cost.

I however do not use UK mainland domestic air services largely because of a preference for being deposited somewhere reasonably adjacent to my intended destination, regardless of cost or journey time.

Meanwhile in the UK, rail travel becomes ever more expensive whilst air transport is encouraged by various grants, subsidies, and tax breaks.

I can't think of any kind of grant, subsidy, or tax break that the air transport industry has benefited from that railways haven't. And then there's capital investment; central government has funded most of that for the railways, and none for airports - except perhaps for the road system, to some extent. Local government, and all those pseudo-local quangos we now have, contribute to both but mostly to rail.

So if you want an explanation for the railways' inability to compete on cost, you'll need to look elsewhere. 

Her Majesty's Government (HMG) have announced that by 2035 that UK carbon emissions are to be reduced by 78%

Hard to see how this is to be achieved without drastic reductions in air travel. If the remaining 22% is to be used for heating of existing housing, and for limited electricity* production, and other high priority uses, then there might well be NOTHING left for aviation.

Or perhaps they propose not to reduce actual fuel used but simply to purchase indulgences, er sorry trade and offset.

*We should be able to produce MOST of our electricity from renewables, but significant natural gas will still be required when wind power is lacking, as has happened recently.


Edit: VickiS - Clarifying Acronym

Don't let the good folk who use Leeds/Bradford airport hear you say that......

.....how many significant domestic routes operate from Leeds/Bradford?

Can any of them be replaced by a train journey of less than 2.5 hrs?

Aviation accounts for about 2% of global emissions. Spend ten years and billions of pounds removing that, and you will only have 76% to go. Doing away with the need for back-up gas generators for the many days that wind power doesn't cover our consumption will save a lot more, and will be best achieved by having a reliable source of electricity that doesn't emit carbon dioxide to provide today's base load for the UK, plus extra to cover the needs currently met by 25 million gas boilers and 20 million+ fossil-powered vehicles. Wind turbines could then be used to produce synthetic aviation fuels and hydrogen should the wind blow hard enough, and if it doesn't, we can use the train. I am sure that HS3 and HS4 will be welcomed by all.

I reckon a rapid expanse in nuclear power will do the trick, hopefully using small modular plants while researching alternatives to uranium, such as thorium. This could be in France, with interconnectors, if they agree, so that we don't have to appease anyone local. I am open to other suggestions, with full explanations.

Trains in the UK run on "red diesel", which is taxed at a lower rate than the diesel used in cars and lorries. Aviation fuel has no taxes whatsoever. In fact the 1944 Chicago Convention makes it a criminal offence (in those countries which have signed up, which is most of the world) to tax aviation fuel.

If you propose to remove the tax on red diesel altogether, I am sure the move would be welcomed by rail operators. It won't save any emissions though - we need an electrified railway to do that, and I haven't seen the Prime Minister's proposals for how that will be achieved.

That was just an example of a tax break the aviation industry benefits from but rail does not, rather than a proposal.

Then you didn't propose removing the tax from red diesel, which is good. As you point out, aviation fuel's tax free status, shared by a few other things, is a matter of international treaty. If it seems unfair, don't forget that train passengers don't pay Air Passenger Duty. Unilateral taxation by UK could well be counterproductive.

An answer to a question I have long pondered can be found in today's Times, concerning the potential of batteries. If our electricity was made entirely by wind and we had every battery made in the whole world within the last 10 years, and the wind stopped blowing, they would keep us going for about two days. If, of course, they were all fully charged. On the showing of recent days, that would have left us in the dark for some nine days as a minimum.

I doubt that anyone is seriously proposing to to meet a significant proportion of UK electricity demand from batteries for days at a time.
What is entirely possible is battery storage of say 4 GWh. about 75% of this capacity could supply say 3 GW for an hour in the high peak of early evening.
Keep the rest of the battery capacity in reserve for emergencies. The national grid are required to plan for "the single worst reasonably foreseeable loss of generating/or import capacity".

The most likely loss is 1 GW when the french interconnector breaks. Having available say 2 GW for half an hour would be very helpful in avoiding blackouts whilst awaiting the starting of alternative capacity.

I would like to see both wind and solar capacity roughly doubled, this would significantly reduce UK carbon emissions from electricity generation.
Some fossil fuel would still be required for calm weather such as at present.

If we are serious about actually physically reducing carbon emissions by 78% then most of the remaining 22% will be needed for higher priority uses than flying.

Fuel duty is indeed a relevant tax break. The convention only covers international flights, but domestic flights don't pay tax either, so strictly that is an advantage provided by the UK government. The reasons for avoiding taxing only some operations are obvious - even if it didn't involve two sorts of fuel (one of them some suitable colour), the complications and scope for fraud would put you off.

Of course it is domestic flights that are the main issue here, with a cross-channel trains vs flights adding a complicating factor. But I'm sure that the main routes where air competes with rail or could be replaced by it don't involve diesel trains, even in this benighted land. So in that sense the effect is going to be marginal, with feeder trains being comparable with wither trains or buses as feeders to airports.

There are many who seem to think it can be done, having fallen for the hype and the "excess renewable" myth. The companies lobbying to add stacks of batteries to the stuff littering local beauty spots obviously aren't saying that they will provide relief to the whole country. They are just saying that they will provide 500 MWh or whatever, in exchange to such subsidy as is available. The more gullible reader sees this as being part of some new form of magic that will help us power the entire country by wind and solar.


On our current electricity demand, on a warm morning, 3 GWh would keep us going for about 6 minutes.


It is sunny and windy out there today. If we doubled the present contribution from wind and solar, we could reduce the amount generated by gas to about 4 GW. Still burning lots of gas, though.


Good luck in the elections with that in the manifesto.

The suggested 3 GWh is not to "keep the whole country going for six minutes" it is to provide about 3 GW for about an hour in the evening peak. Quicker acting than gas turbine plant and very useful for short term peaks. Similar in purpose to the existing pumped storage capacity, and more efficient than OCGT that would otherwise be used for peak demands.

The batteries would be charged at off peak hours, or when there is a surplus of renewable energy.

I am well aware that there is NO SURPLUS of renewable energy AT PRESENT. As renewable generating capacity continues to grow, a surplus is possible in the future, during windy weather or bright sun.

You're doing it again...


OK, you're not doing it again. So we agree that there is no surplus of renewable energy at present. Hopefully, by the time of the first Go-op train, there might just have been.

Simple observation of the gridwatch site shows that there is no surplus of renewable electricity at present, nor is any such surplus expected in the near future.


A FUTURE surplus is a reasonable expectation as renewable generating capacity continues to grow.

BTW, there WAS once a regional surplus in Scotland, for two or three nights, but that was under freak conditions that are most unlikely ever to be repeated.

Scotland has a population of around 5.5 million, and around 8.5 GW, of installed onshore wind power. Per capita, that is a heck of a lot more than England, with some 750 MW for 56 million people. It isn't a universally popular policy north of the border, with allegations that the suits in Edinburgh are riding roughshod over the rights of ordinary people in the rest of the country for their own purpose. The strategy seems to be to have a surplus to export to England, but the infrastructure isn't particularly robust. The UK government doesn't seem too keen to upgrade it, as the money could be better spent on other carbon reduction schemes.

Scotland does seem to have put most of its eggs in the wind basket, though. It does have a lot more of it than England, of course, but the record lows of the past two weeks have included Scotland. It has more hydro power than England at around 1.6 GW capacity (including pumped) but the options for expansion are limited. Much of the hydro was driven by aluminium smelting, an industry largely departed from these shores. The turbines are generally powered by puttin a waterfall into steel pipes, so have their critics. Quite what will happen in the event of a successful independence vote is anyone's guess, but it looks like Scotland should be OK for electricity most days until the turbines need replacing.

Eh? The installed onshore capacity in England is a lot lower than for Scotland, but over 3 GW even so. You can put that down to the powers that be (and plan power) reckoning that most of the suitable bits of England (windy and without Tory voters) are at sea. But while those offshore turbines have a better utilisation, size matters. Even allowing for that extra honorary land, the area : people ratio of England is much lower.

I'm not sure what plan power is, but I see the absence of onshore power as a plus, not a minus. This comes from living in the sort of place where electricity companies want to dump wind turbines, rather than in somewhere with a high energy consumption. I've seen the whole seven year process at first hand. Foreign company applies to build wind farm, starts consultation. Local residents overwhelmingly say no. Parish councils say no. District council planning committee says no unanimously. Full council says no with one dissenting voice. Company appeals, planning inspector says yes. Crew of foreign workers turn up one day, fill holes each the size of an Olympic swimming pool with concrete, stick 300-feet tall machine where you wouldn't get permission to build a small chalet, then move on to the next one. Company sends subsidy forms off, and sends the money home. It isn't particularly democratic. The local MP at the time this all started was a Lib Dem. He said he was against it. His party thought it was a good idea, so he got booted out at the first opportunity in favour of the one who was against onshore wind. I'm not saying that you can blame wind power for the current Tory government, but it was the most popular topic of discussion in the constituency.