HS2

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nezumi
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Re: HS2

Post by nezumi » Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:11 pm

I'd much prefer, on reflection, just from an aesthetic point of view, to ride a train on a rail above a strip of near country-length natural British conservation. That would be a truly utopian dream, unachievable* I know, but to aim towards something more like that would be grand. Could set up a lovely big hiking trail along the way, make riding the train itself an event to look forward to and provide gorgeous interconnected habitat while simultaneously opening up other rail for other freight and just generally solving all the problems while giving the tourism industry a bit of a boost along the way. And think of the bees! British wildflowers and meadow land, wetlands, woodland, try and fit in a moor or two. Heavenly!

A girl can dream, I suppose.

* expensive. Not unachievable. *sigh*
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Re: HS2

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:22 pm

Lew Dolby wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 7:49 pm
Do these replacement woodlands get any special protection ? Or, when someone wants to put a railway/road/housing estate where one is, the politicians and/or developers will start arguing that they're not worth saving 'cos they're not ancient woodlands ??
AFAICT at least some of it is via grants to landowners to establish forestry plantations (of native species) via the HS2 Woodland Fund. So, um, no.
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Re: HS2

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:24 pm

nezumi wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:11 pm
I'd much prefer, on reflection, just from an aesthetic point of view, to ride a train on a rail above a strip of near country-length natural British conservation. That would be a truly utopian dream, unachievable* I know, but to aim towards something more like that would be grand. Could set up a lovely big hiking trail along the way, make riding the train itself an event to look forward to and provide gorgeous interconnected habitat while simultaneously opening up other rail for other freight and just generally solving all the problems while giving the tourism industry a bit of a boost along the way. And think of the bees! British wildflowers and meadow land, wetlands, woodland, try and fit in a moor or two. Heavenly!

A girl can dream, I suppose.

* expensive. Not unachievable. *sigh*
Me too! And the Wildlife Trust proposal to include footpaths and cycle paths and stuff would make it accessible even to people who aren't on the train.

Am I alone in thinking that £130m for a project of that scale is peanuts? Compared to £100 billion for the trainline itself it's nothing.

And given that the UK's just committed to protecting 30% of its territory for biodiversity over the next decade, they're probably going to be spending more than that on stuff anyway.
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Re: HS2

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:28 pm

Re: carbon emissions.
The following excerpt from the document [the Oakervee review] highlights the problem: ‘In the short to medium term, the construction of HS2 is forecast to add to carbon emissions. The most recent estimates from HS2 Ltd on emissions from construction of the full HS2 network are at between 8m and 14m tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) over the construction period, around 0.1% of current UK emissions on an annual basis.’

Obviously, the question that the document then addresses is whether the carbon savings from less carbon-intensive travel will be worth the emissions from construction. In short, it is unclear that they will.

The report notes that HS2 may encourage people to travel by rail instead of car but that 'the relative carbon benefits of rail compared with car travel will diminish as cars electrify'.

Overall, it finds that ‘the operational footprint of the full HS2 network is estimated by HS2 Ltd at saving circa 11-12m tonnes of CO2e over the first 60 years of operation’.

On the basis that the 11 million tonnes figure is smack in the middle of the 8-14 million range for construction emissions, the report notes that ‘it is not clear whether overall HS2 is positive or negative for greenhouse gas emissions.

‘Based on the current assessment, if the low end construction emissions are achieved, HS2 will reduce carbon emissions by 3-4m tonnes of CO2e; at the high end, the project will contribute 1-3m tonnes of CO2e over the assessment period of construction and 60 years of operation.’

It is also worth noting, following the government's recent announcement on increasing the ethanol content of petrol, that E10 has the potential to cut CO2 from transport by 750,000 tonnes per year. This is annually saving around a quarter of the entire CO2 savings of HS2 over 60 years under the most optimistic estimates.

Bear in mind that the full network is now not likely to be complete until 2040, which means that the assessment period over which the project could, on balance, be carbon neutral is the end of the century, half a century on from 2050.
https://www.transport-network.co.uk/HS2 ... -air/16484

So, given that the world needs to be net carbon zero by 2050 to meet Paris, something that's still going to be net positive in 2060 doesn't seem like a useful investment [eta - from a carbon perspective].
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Re: HS2

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:41 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 5:35 pm
For an alternative vision of the kinds of things environmentalists have been asking for, Network Rail's environment page is worth a look.

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/communiti ... th-nature/

For instance, last I heard local conservation groups were pretty happy with how the new East-West Rail link is going to fit into the landscape. https://eastwestrail.co.uk/latest-news/ ... nvironment


Trains aren't inherently green, but can be quite easily. HS2's destructiveness is a deliberate choice, and IMO a disappointing one.
For Network Rail, they did get a lot of criticism for their environmental management, from plodder no less. It's in the last couple of years only that NR have smartened things up a fair bit.

For EWR, it's also worth remembering that it's much easier for them to fit into the landscape - the Bicester-Bletchley line opened in 1850, and the trackbed is in pretty good nick, considering it's been mothballed for 50 years or so. Even the rails weren't removed when the line closed. In addition, the government has decided in its quite remarkably infinite stupidity not to electrify the line (at one point there was even talk of not making passive provision for future electrification, such was the reach of the stench of Grayling's horrific approach to these things - I think they may have backtracked on this since, though I'm not sure). That makes the railway bed in quite a lot more easily. But you can be sure that when they cut the sod 174 years ago, they gave not the smallest part of a sh.t about bats or newts or badgers or anything like that, and for 116 years great clunking smoke machines pumped out a f.cking great load of pollution and CO2. We don't especially care about all that now, of course because it was so long ago.

I'm not going to condemn or defend HS2's behaviour, because I don't know enough about it in order to do so, but I think it's worth remembering that managing live railways and reinstating former railways are both very different propositions from trying to create a completely new one from scratch.
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Re: HS2

Post by bolo » Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:44 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:28 pm
So, given that the world needs to be net carbon zero by 2050 to meet Paris, something that's still going to be net positive in 2060 doesn't seem like a useful investment [eta - from a carbon perspective].
I know nothing about HS2, but I'm not sure this is a useful way of thinking about its impact on CO2. It's the world as a whole that needs to be net zero, not each individual component of it separately. The human metabolism, for example, is net CO2 positive, and yet I presume we're going to still have humans in 2050. So surely the question is whether HS2 will be better than the available passenger transport alternatives?

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Re: HS2

Post by Fishnut » Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:58 pm

I just wanted to say thank you to BoaF and EPD for their really excellent posts on this subject. I'm learning loads! I'm completely agnostic towards HS2, mostly because it's NIMBY* but it's an excellent example of IABMCTT. Short-term vs long-term costs and gains, national vs local impacts, prioritisation of the economy vs the environment. It seems to be a project where consensus is impossible because it depends on what you value most, and that differs from person to person. From my reading** of the discussion here and in the old place it also seems to be a project which either needs to be completed in full, or cancelled entirely, because the benefits only really outweigh the costs when fully complete.

* Portishead has been trying to reinstate its one-track train line to Bristol for about 20 years, so anything on the scale of HS2 around here is unimaginable

** which may well be wrong - please tell me if it is
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Re: HS2

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:01 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:41 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 5:35 pm
For an alternative vision of the kinds of things environmentalists have been asking for, Network Rail's environment page is worth a look.

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/communiti ... th-nature/

For instance, last I heard local conservation groups were pretty happy with how the new East-West Rail link is going to fit into the landscape. https://eastwestrail.co.uk/latest-news/ ... nvironment


Trains aren't inherently green, but can be quite easily. HS2's destructiveness is a deliberate choice, and IMO a disappointing one.
For Network Rail, they did get a lot of criticism for their environmental management, from plodder no less. It's in the last couple of years only that NR have smartened things up a fair bit.
Yes, I think from me as well. But they took the criticism on board and seem to be making more of an effort, which is good. (I know they have other priorities!)
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:41 pm
For EWR, it's also worth remembering that it's much easier for them to fit into the landscape - the Bicester-Bletchley line opened in 1850, and the trackbed is in pretty good nick, considering it's been mothballed for 50 years or so. Even the rails weren't removed when the line closed. In addition, the government has decided in its quite remarkably infinite stupidity not to electrify the line (at one point there was even talk of not making passive provision for future electrification, such was the reach of the stench of Grayling's horrific approach to these things - I think they may have backtracked on this since, though I'm not sure). That makes the railway bed in quite a lot more easily. But you can be sure that when they cut the sod 174 years ago, they gave not the smallest part of a sh.t about bats or newts or badgers or anything like that, and for 116 years great clunking smoke machines pumped out a f.cking great load of pollution and CO2. We don't especially care about all that now, of course because it was so long ago.
The countryside was very different 174 years ago anyway - things like 'connectivity' probably weren't much of an issue because there was habitat everywhere anyway, woodlands and rough grassland and ancient hedges and all sorts. So the impact on conservation would have been comparatively less (except for all the smoke).
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:41 pm
I'm not going to condemn or defend HS2's behaviour, because I don't know enough about it in order to do so, but I think it's worth remembering that managing live railways and reinstating former railways are both very different propositions from trying to create a completely new one from scratch.
That's a fair point. There are other examples of best-practice, of course - I mentioned the EA earlier, for instance, who are delivering a lot of habitat alongside flood protection infrastructure. One thing that NR and the EA do well is partnering with local organisations where appropriate.

To be honest, I used to just assume HS2 was probably fine, until I saw that the RSPB had walked out and the Wildlife Trusts were all pissed off. Those aren't hot-headed hippies - those are incredibly conservative, conciliatory organisations who get a lot of stick from the bolshier end of the conservation community for getting in bed with the bad guys. If they can't hold their noses, HS2 are probably properly stinky. And what I've seen of the plans are very disappointing.
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Re: HS2

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:20 pm

bolo wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:44 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:28 pm
So, given that the world needs to be net carbon zero by 2050 to meet Paris, something that's still going to be net positive in 2060 doesn't seem like a useful investment [eta - from a carbon perspective].
I know nothing about HS2, but I'm not sure this is a useful way of thinking about its impact on CO2. It's the world as a whole that needs to be net zero, not each individual component of it separately. The human metabolism, for example, is net CO2 positive, and yet I presume we're going to still have humans in 2050. So surely the question is whether HS2 will be better than the available passenger transport alternatives?
Sure, and ultimately it all depends on how much of a shift from other transport modes, rates of grid decarbonisation, rate of EV rollout, etc. But people often take it as an obvious truth that HS2 is going to be really important for a low-carbon future, and that's not necessarily the case e.g. if renewables and/or EVs take off quickly, or renewables take off slowly, or people just stop commuting so much after the pandemic and/or the economy rebalances northwards.

So it's a bit annoying when people laugh at environmentalists protesting against teh trains as if they're just being silly sausages who've forgotten about climate change. The benefits aren't that clear.
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Re: HS2

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:28 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:58 pm
I just wanted to say thank you to BoaF and EPD for their really excellent posts on this subject. I'm learning loads! I'm completely agnostic towards HS2, mostly because it's NIMBY* but it's an excellent example of IABMCTT. Short-term vs long-term costs and gains, national vs local impacts, prioritisation of the economy vs the environment. It seems to be a project where consensus is impossible because it depends on what you value most, and that differs from person to person. From my reading** of the discussion here and in the old place it also seems to be a project which either needs to be completed in full, or cancelled entirely, because the benefits only really outweigh the costs when fully complete.

* Portishead has been trying to reinstate its one-track train line to Bristol for about 20 years, so anything on the scale of HS2 around here is unimaginable

** which may well be wrong - please tell me if it is
:D Thanks!

FWIW I'd consider myself pro-HS2, but also pro-nature, so I want HS2 with environmental enhancements. I am, as ever, politically moderate.

But if I were to entertain the idea of 'thinking big and upending the system' (to coin a phrase), I'd say that we need to stop silo-ing ecological thinking and build resilience into management processes more generally. Trying to balance up trees-chopped-down with saplings-to-be-planted (as cheaply as possible) is wack. Build your trains, then restore a bl..dy great slab of nature around it, make it a national park, stick cycle paths through it. Can't see the woods for the trees, these HS2 people.
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Re: HS2

Post by nezumi » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:55 pm

I'm still in favour if it's a country-length piece of conservation. Otherwise I am opposed. However, achieving something like HS2 with the provisos given would be a huge boon to other conservation efforts, and would boost usage of the rest of the train network. My aim overall is not just to reduce carbon impact in the long term, I also want us to rely less on private transport overall because it is a very inefficient use of resources.

NOTE: I wrote this before about 4 other posts so it might look out of place.

Spoilering this because it's going to be a fairly long exposition about what I would see as the "ideal" Britain. Skip if you're not interested or fundamentally opposed to re-villaging (which is a term I don't know if I just invented or not).

Spoiler:
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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:04 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:20 pm
bolo wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:44 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:28 pm
So, given that the world needs to be net carbon zero by 2050 to meet Paris, something that's still going to be net positive in 2060 doesn't seem like a useful investment [eta - from a carbon perspective].
I know nothing about HS2, but I'm not sure this is a useful way of thinking about its impact on CO2. It's the world as a whole that needs to be net zero, not each individual component of it separately. The human metabolism, for example, is net CO2 positive, and yet I presume we're going to still have humans in 2050. So surely the question is whether HS2 will be better than the available passenger transport alternatives?
Sure, and ultimately it all depends on how much of a shift from other transport modes, rates of grid decarbonisation, rate of EV rollout, etc. But people often take it as an obvious truth that HS2 is going to be really important for a low-carbon future, and that's not necessarily the case e.g. if renewables and/or EVs take off quickly, or renewables take off slowly, or people just stop commuting so much after the pandemic and/or the economy rebalances northwards.

So it's a bit annoying when people laugh at environmentalists protesting against teh trains as if they're just being silly sausages who've forgotten about climate change. The benefits aren't that clear.
Your carbon report doesn’t consider the massive benefits of the increased capacity to a huge chunk of the uk’s railways.

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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:08 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:28 pm
Fishnut wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:58 pm
I just wanted to say thank you to BoaF and EPD for their really excellent posts on this subject. I'm learning loads! I'm completely agnostic towards HS2, mostly because it's NIMBY* but it's an excellent example of IABMCTT. Short-term vs long-term costs and gains, national vs local impacts, prioritisation of the economy vs the environment. It seems to be a project where consensus is impossible because it depends on what you value most, and that differs from person to person. From my reading** of the discussion here and in the old place it also seems to be a project which either needs to be completed in full, or cancelled entirely, because the benefits only really outweigh the costs when fully complete.

* Portishead has been trying to reinstate its one-track train line to Bristol for about 20 years, so anything on the scale of HS2 around here is unimaginable

** which may well be wrong - please tell me if it is
:D Thanks!

FWIW I'd consider myself pro-HS2, but also pro-nature, so I want HS2 with environmental enhancements. I am, as ever, politically moderate.

But if I were to entertain the idea of 'thinking big and upending the system' (to coin a phrase), I'd say that we need to stop silo-ing ecological thinking and build resilience into management processes more generally. Trying to balance up trees-chopped-down with saplings-to-be-planted (as cheaply as possible) is wack. Build your trains, then restore a bl..dy great slab of nature around it, make it a national park, stick cycle paths through it. Can't see the woods for the trees, these HS2 people.
I may be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure the cycle track was removed by the Treasury, not HS2. Opponents have also been banging on about cost.

It’s probably worth remembering that the rural route HS2 takes (especially close to London) is heavily populated with very wealthy and very well connected professionals who are used to getting their own way.

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Re: HS2

Post by JQH » Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:47 am

Lew Dolby wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 7:49 pm
Do these replacement woodlands get any special protection ? Or, when someone wants to put a railway/road/housing estate where one is, the politicians and/or developers will start arguing that they're not worth saving 'cos they're not ancient woodlands ??
That's a bl..dy good point.
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Re: HS2

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:28 am

FWIW whilst I'm very pro-HS2, I used to be considerably more evangelical about it than I am now, and that reduction in enthusiasm (though not support) is largely down to having some good conversations here and in the other place. It's quite hard to maintain enthusiasm when they seem to be doing some wrong things in regard to nature in the way that they are. Like BoaF, I earnestly wish they were spot on on this stuff, it's a real shame that opportunities seem to be being missed.

I think plodder does have a point though, inasmuch as road construction doesn't seem to have anywhere near the same level of opposition right now. There is protest about the M25 stuff, but it's fairly minor compared to that for HS2, and for a much higher level of ecological damage as well.
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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:07 am

JQH wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 8:47 am
Lew Dolby wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 7:49 pm
Do these replacement woodlands get any special protection ? Or, when someone wants to put a railway/road/housing estate where one is, the politicians and/or developers will start arguing that they're not worth saving 'cos they're not ancient woodlands ??
That's a bl..dy good point.
That would be difficult from a legislative perspective but presumably something the planning authorities and Natural England can insist on. However it's likely (from a planning consent) HS2 is subject to one of these new infrastructure orders which limits the ability of angry consultees to hold up national infrastructure projects (see my previous post). None of these decision makers are HS2, by the way.

Also, in a "look over there, not over here!" way, it's grating to see home and road building programmes, with far, far higher destruction of habitats, being given a free ride because everyone is focusing on HS2. Road building especially - it's not just the M25, it's a huge national programme.

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Re: HS2

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:04 am

plodder wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:07 am
Also, in a "look over there, not over here!" way, it's grating to see home and road building programmes, with far, far higher destruction of habitats, being given a free ride because everyone is focusing on HS2. Road building especially - it's not just the M25, it's a huge national programme.
I've been thinking about this. I agree that the impact of new housing and roads is probably going to be far greater than HS2. OTOH I think there's a couple of reasons why the focus on HS2 shouldn't be seen as conflicting.

Basically, HS2 is a massive, high-profile project, costing a huge amount of public money. It's being ordered by the Department of Transport, the top people at DEFRA and NE were involved in overseeing the mitigation and compensation stuff, the Forestry Commission are involved in overseeing a lot of habitat replacement, etc. In other words, this is a flagship government project.

Therefore, it must be held to the highest standards. If NE don't bother to make a £100bn trainline do adequate compensation, a county ecologist is going to struggle to make the case that a new bypass should too, let alone a few houses on a bit of unproductive farmland (that is in fact a crucial patch of grassland habitat).

I've been in local-level meetings to draft regional planning frameworks (as part of a pre-PhD job). Everyone is very concerned about what they can make stick in court. They all know the details of similar projects all over the country (and EU courts, though I guess they're less relevant now), to see what the precedent is. The National Planning Policy Framework sets out the intention of no net biodiversity loss, with a guideline to be net positive. If local level regulators are to be able to push anyone towards achieving the guidline, HS2 has to have done it, especially as a nominally "green" project. But using DEFRA's own biodiversity accounting toolkit, in their own report, HS2 admit that they're causing a net loss. Therefore, every housing project and road proposal can do the same. The rules are defanged before entering the arena.

There aren't enough protestors to stop HS2, despite drawing from a national pool. Collectively protesting one flagrant, publicly funded project to stop it undermining the government's own policy priorities is surely one of the most effective uses of protestor power, rather than scattering them piecemeal all over local news. Ministers are having to address this stuff, and they care about what the public thinks. Etcetera.

In short, I think the conservation sector is trying to make an example out of HS2, and I think that's a sensible strategy. If it fails to at least secure a change of approach for the next phases, then sure they can pour more attention into housing and roads. They'll get attacked over the housing crisis, of course. And it's much harder to draw national attention to local-level projects, so there'll be little media attention and fewer people protesting. (Note how HS2 protests get way more attention when XR do them in London. Nobody in the media cares about a bunch of provincials up a tree in Oxfordshire. That's just what they do in the countryside, isn't it?)

Is this a completely stupid take?
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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Sat Feb 06, 2021 10:06 am

I think it is, yes. HS2 have been working with Natural England (the environmental regulator) throughout, and the project has planning consent including huge amounts of mitigation.

£27bn is in the budget for road building over the next few years, which will be spent well before hs2 is completed - let’s be generous and say it opens in about 15 years (slightly behind schedule). If the road spending is maintained these are similar orders of magnitude of cost.

You are still using silly, pejorative language for a project that is wholly necessary to decarbonise our country.

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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Sat Feb 06, 2021 11:09 am

This thread is also worth a look, on the “destroyed” ancient woodlands.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Greens4HS2/s ... 6514370560

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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Sat Feb 06, 2021 11:15 am

And here’s a good general thread from an environmentalist perspective, from people claiming to be green party members who disagree with the party line. It’s got references etc so again, worth a read.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Greens4HS2/s ... 1589244928

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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Sat Feb 06, 2021 11:20 am

I think the conservation movement in the UK is exactly that: it’s dominated by nervous ineffectual old posh blokes who are terrified of change and technology - it’s about preservation rather than adaptation. They wrap themselves up in a cloak of loveliness whilst overseeing constant and perpetual decline. They foster a culture of mistrust and yet also get completely hoodwinked by eg the organic lot.

I’m not talking about the excellent technical people who work for these organisations btw, I’m talking about the leadership and the zealots. They’re clutching at straws for relevance and it’s as depressing as anything that’s recently happened to the Labour party.

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Re: HS2

Post by Martin Y » Sat Feb 06, 2021 7:25 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 10:28 pm
Re: carbon emissions.
<snip> It is also worth noting, following the government's recent announcement on increasing the ethanol content of petrol, that E10 has the potential to cut CO2 from transport by 750,000 tonnes per year. This is annually saving around a quarter of the entire CO2 savings of HS2 over 60 years under the most optimistic estimates. </snip>
https://www.transport-network.co.uk/HS2 ... -air/16484

So, given that the world needs to be net carbon zero by 2050 to meet Paris, something that's still going to be net positive in 2060 doesn't seem like a useful investment [eta - from a carbon perspective].
I realise that I don't know what "has the potential to" means for the extra 5% ethanol going into petrol. It's somewhere on the line between "is expected to almost" and "could hypothetically, in fantasy land". But I don't have a grasp of where.

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Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Sat Feb 06, 2021 8:23 pm

ethanol and biofuels would deserve their own thread tbh. Ethanol requires intensive farming with its own biodiversity, nitrogen, soil loss issues. Rail is inherently more energy efficient than cars, regardless of where the energy comes from.

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Re: HS2

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Sun Feb 07, 2021 8:25 am

For whatever it's worth, don't forget that rail is moving to be rid of diesel between 2040 and 2050. Obviously, this is down to a government target of 2040, but it's also subject to government funding at the right time and without too much delay from the DfT (the same DfT who, four years later, still haven't decided whether they want to fully electrify the transpennine route), and is being delivered by a company that delivered the GWML electrification three years late and 50% over budget.

But still.
If truth is many-sided, mendacity is many-tongued

plodder
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2981
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:50 pm

Re: HS2

Post by plodder » Sun Feb 07, 2021 9:30 am

Like the installation of electric car chargers everywhere won’t be just as crummy...

Here’s some fun vitriol against the Euston tunnel people, if you like that sort of thing:

https://mobile.twitter.com/respros/stat ... 4931625985

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