Wildfire Comes for Your Strawman

While companies and the current administration in the United States are doing everything in their power to avoid hard decisions and continue with business as usual, cities and governments in other countries are stepping up on reducing the impacts of climate change and health damaging emissions.

Recently, the American Association of Railroads put out a report saying that railroad electrification is not feasible in the United States on 105,000 miles of track given the estimated costs of $9m/mile. An recent Federal Railroad Administration report that came out just a month earlier put the number at $2-$4/mile.

But no one realistically would expect the industry to electrify every mile of track in the United States, just the main lines that use the most energy and create the most pollution. I think the AAR needed a strawman so they built one.

The biggest reason I don’t believe them is that India electrified 24,000 miles of track in just 12 years and China has built out a massive high speed rail network of 28,000 miles over the last two decades which is arguably harder than freight electrification.

The railroads however are famously run by penny pinching private companies who care more about Wall Street gains than actually moving freight or caring about climate change. Freight trains are famously much more efficient than cars or trucking, but they could be even more so.

It’s not hard to imagine that with economies of scale and a mandate that we could actually do this. We electrified Caltrain going through some of the worst NIMBY enclaves in the country and it has come out the other side as a great success, so it seems doable to me.

Cities are working on the energy transition too. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Manheim Germany is eliminating natural gas for heating by focusing more on district heating through heat pumps and is giving rate payers a generous subsidy of 10k Euro per household to make the switch to electricity.

Hamburg is embarking on a heat mapping program that by 2026 will identify neighborhoods ready to switch. It will also be cheaper for the utilities over the long run as the cost of carbon increases and climate goals focus on a 2035 phase out fossil fuels.

Here in the US of course we’re ripping up agencies focused on climate change but the energy transition is inevitable. We know that we need more electric vehicle chargers and especially that electric vehicles alone aren’t the lone solution, especially from an equity perspective.

But even if we don’t continue forward over the next four years on climate, or states and cities are the lone bastion of advancement, other countries will invest in technology and many are focused on positive outcomes. And that is how we move forward.