I was writing a way too long comment onto A Siegel's really good diary:
Energy COOL: A Powerful Renewable Vision
When I decided that I would post my first diary instead.
I know A Siegel is a big proponent of rail transportation as an efficient way to move people and goods. I thought I'd bring some thoughts about that into the discussion about energy. There is potential for the type of system that A Siegel discusses to be meshed to changes to our transportation system that would benefit both.
Right now, there are at least 6 major transcontinental rail lines in the US and Canada. They have three primary businesses:
-Hauling Coal (especially out of the Powder River Basin)
-Moving containers of consumer goods (mostly east from the west coast ports)
-Hauling Grain (especially out of the northern plains)
These trains use diesel fuel almost exclusively and they are much more energy efficient than trucks, but the really bad thing from a energy perspective is with respect to hauling coal.
Right now coal is hauled out of the Powder River Basin using diesel fuel refined from mostly foreign oil. There is a double carbon hit for coal-generated electricity; the big hit in burning the coal, and a second hit for hauling the coal into place with oil.
The kicker is that the trains run through the great plains, one of the best places on earth for wind power. By combining the type of network that A Siegel mentions in his diary (one that would link solar, wind, and other energy sources together with new transmission technology) with rail electrification in North America, great synergies are possible. The west is also home to some major source of hydroelectric power and many regions have great potential for solar power as well.
There is an additional technological piece to the puzzle:
Rail electrification would replace Dynamic Breaking with Regenerative Breaking. Right now, a train takes a lot of diesel fuel to climb the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada, even if trucks would use a lot more. On the downhill on the other side, the potential energy of the train at a high elevation is burned off through brakes to keep the train from going too fast. If the rail lines can be electrified, then this energy can be reused to help pull a train up hill...just like a hybrid car.
There is potential for strong synergy between the transportation system and the electrical power system. It would require that we string wires up over our major rail lines at the same time as building the sort of grid proposed in the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC). It might be less costly to construct if the two aspects are designed and built as one.
In Europe, they already have that part of the puzzle done. Their major rail lines already use electricity instead of diesel fuel. But don't feel inferior, North America is better than Europe in one respect of rail transportation. Our railroads haul more freight over long distances than their railroads do and our rail share is growing. In Europe, truck traffic is growing much more rapidly.
EDIT:
I bumped into this on the CAHSR blog:
Electric Stimuli
There are some interesting pictures of transmission lines sited above rail rights of way. The blog also links to this article about rail electrification:
Time to revisit electrification?