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INFORMED SOURCES October 2007

Electrification – procrastination rules

Anything but electrification is the philosophy at the State Ministry of Railways.

We should never, ever, forget the propensity for Government Ministers and their civil servants to wreck successful industries. They may do it from ignorance, naiveté, malice, idealism or with the best of intentions. As the poet Philip Larkin observed, ‘they may not mean to but they do'.

For example, this year marks the 50 th anniversary of the Duncan Sandys Defence Review. This concluded, among other things, 'that fighter aircraft will in due course be replaced by a ground-to-air guided missile system'.

With the RAF ‘unlikely to have a requirement for fighter aircraft of types more advanced than the supersonic P.1' (and we all know who built that) ‘work on such projects will stop'. The resulting cancellations began the destruction of the British aircraft industry while t he P.1 Lightning was to remain in service until 1988.

By coincidence, shortly before I wrote this, the Russians reinstated their probing flights around out Northern airspace. Grasping a photo-opportunity, the RAF scrambled a couple of Typhoons to shoo the Tupolev Bear away. How you would have done that with a ground to air guided missile during the Cold War was apparently not consideration in 1957.

Petition response

Which brings us to railway electrification in 21 st Century Britain where the spirit of Duncan Sandys lives on. I would have put ‘(groan)' after ‘electrification' in that first sentence, acknowledging that this column has analysed the subject to death over the last couple of years, were it not for feedback from readers early in August.

While it is easy to dismiss the No 10 Downing Street e-petition website as cosmetic, since no one seriously believes that the Prime Minister takes any notice, Tony Blair went further than he needed to in setting it up. In particular, No 10 specified that any petition gaining over 200 signatures has to have a formal reply which is sent to everyone who has signed up.

When the Informed Sources Electrify! Petition closed on 26 July it had 3713 signatures. This was personally disappointing, as I had been hoping for 5000, but it is still a useful number and thanks to all who took the trouble to log on and sign-up.

But, on 14 August, 3713 people simultaneously received the formal response shown in the box. And my e-mail in tray went mad.

What really annoyed readers was the unique requirement for payback in ‘10-15 years', rather than the customary 30 years applied to capital investment. This was based on a starry eyed view of the potential for ‘development of alternative low carbon forms of traction'. Maybe that should be ‘staring eyed'.

White Paper

In fact, the PM's office was simply repeating, albeit a bit more firmly, the policy on electrification investment in the White Paper ‘ Delivering a sustainable railway' published on 24 July. This is an appalling document based on doing nothing because forecasting is difficult, particularly when it comes to the future.

Here is a sample.

‘The Government is clear that the industry needs to take a pragmatic and progressive approach to electrification, determined on a case-by-case basis, driven by business and operational need. In the short term, the

key question is whether the benefits of such investment over 10–15 years are greater than its costs, so that it pays for itself regardless of what the optimum longer-term carbon choices turn out to be. But the case for more strategic, or network-wide, electrification will also be kept under review in preparation for future investment programmes as future energy and generation technologies develop, so that rail can position itself to take advantage of the best long-term carbon choices.

Let's deconstruct this specious waffle. For a start, can you really be pragmatic and progressive? In fact in true Orwellian Newspeak the policy is dogmatic and regressive.

But to be more serious, note the ‘case-by-case basis, driven by business and operational need'. Electrification schemes have always been driven by business and operational needs and, since somewhere in the Department's archives are the cases for the BR schemes and the ‘back check' verifications, the Department knows this. The case for electrification, as with other investment, is built on pounds of Net Present Value not subjected to the sort of wonkery greenery uncertainty in the White Paper.

Inconsistent

Here we come to the first example of internal inconsistency in the white Paper. Assume we started the Midland Main Line electrification today and got the wires up to Derby and Nottingham in five years. Then the 10-15 year payback implies that by 2030 the proven economic, operational, capacity, reliability and energy saving advantages of an electric railway might be brought to naught by the value of the reductions in emissions from ‘new low-carbon traction systems'.

This suggests that DfT Rail is expects that in only 20 years time hydrogen fuel cells or dilithium crystal reactors might be able to provide Megawatts of traction power and render electrification redundant. But further reading shows that this isn't the case.

According to the White Paper t he ‘most promising technology appears to be the hydrogen fuel cell'. It then lists the principal obstacles ‘cost, storage and the elimination of the high carbon footprint of producing hydrogen, for example through biogeneration', warning, ‘it may be many years before this problem is solved, even in the laboratory, and even longer before a solution is made commercially viable. The Government has assumed that such a technology will not become available within the lifetime of this strategy'.

Since the White Paper talks of 30 year challenges, I assume that ‘not before 2037' is what is meant by not in the lifetime of this strategy. So, deep breath, and recapitulate.

What the techno-wonks in DfT Rail are saying is that we won't be piping totally-green liquid hydrogen produced from bionic duckweed into traction depots until after 2037. But still this is a ‘potential development that needs to be factored into rail planning, particularly in relation to electrification'.

So something that is not expected to be viable for 30 years, imposes a mandatory 10-15 year payback period to avoid investment in electrification being made nugatory by alternative low carbon forms of traction. Hell's teeth, they can't even be internally consistent.

Fence sitting

And that's just one example. This inability to get off the fence features again in the section of the White Paper headed ‘Framing an environmental strategy'.

This starts by listing the advantages of electric traction: typically 18% more energy efficient than diesel and greater carrying capacity for high speed trains, an important consideration given the overall priority given to capacity in the White Paper. The only drawback is vulnerability to power supply interruption, ‘but this is not sufficient to offset the environmental advantages'.

So far, so rational. But then we go off on another ‘anything but electrification' straw-man-building exercise.

Given all this positive stuff the White Paper says ‘some argue for prioritising network-wide electrification today. There are three main reasons for not pursuing this course'

First, electrification is expensive (inflated to ‘very expensive' in the petition response. ‘If it were pursued in 2009–14, it would be at the cost of more urgently-needed investment in increased carrying capacity, which will deliver a greater level of benefit'.

This is two Fatuous Reasons Against Electrification (FRAME) in one sentence. First, ‘expensive' or even ‘very expensive' are meaningless in terms of capital investment. It's whether you get value for the money that counts – assuming you have any money, of course.

And if main line electrification were ‘pursued' in the 2009-2014 control Period 4 I would be surprised if any money were spent before 2015. By the time you have chosen the initial route and taken the work through Network Rail's GRIP process, five years will have flown by. This is why 2009-2014 is the ideal time to start planning a rolling programme.

Of course, the ploy is obvious. When the HLOS for 2015-2020 is published in five years time exactly the same false logic can, and probably will, be applied. Alternative low carbon energy sources will still be 15-20 years away, justifying a continuation of wait and see.

Self powered

DfT Rail's second argument is that The future performance of electric and self-powered trains is ‘unpredictable today'. It claims that developments in ‘hybrid technology, biofuels and hydrogen fuel cells' will improve the carbon performance of self powered trains, while changes in power generation will improve that of electric trains. It concludes ‘there remain considerable uncertainties about the relative pace at which these technologies will develop'.

True enough, but does it matter? What we do know is that however electricity is produced, an electric railway will make the best use of it.

Incoherent

Or try reconciling these statements, both from the White Paper. ‘a pragmatic and progressive approach to electrification, determined on a case-by-case basis, driven by business and operational need' and the ‘right long-term solution for rail will be the one that minimises its carbon footprint and energy bill'.

Well, transport generates 23% of Britain 's CO2 emissions and rail travel represents less than 1% of this. So the likelihood of distilled moonbeam power making a financially significant difference to the railway's carbon offset bill seems small.

What about minimising the energy bill? Well the railway currently costs around £10 billion a year to run and Network Rail estimates that next year, the bill for electric current for Traction (EC4T) will be around £225 million. So once again, in the grand scheme of things we are talking of small improvements in very small numbers.

Elsewhere, the White Paper says that the ‘right' solution to future traction policy will depend on ‘the relative rates at which the carbon footprint of electricity generation declines and the rate at which options become available for low-carbon, self-powered trains'. It observes that ‘neither of (these) can be forecast at present'. So more wait and see.

Kevin

At the briefing for the railway press, I pointed out that making energy emissions and costs the determinant for electrifying the railway overlooked the fact that you invest in electrification because it provides more of what you use a railway for and save energy in the process. ‘Oh, so you'd spend all the money on electrification then', came the petulant reply.

Reader, I snapped, and accused the speaker of behaving like Kevin the Teenager and exaggerating a simple issue to absurdity. ‘You make electrification part of a balanced investment programme', I explained.

You see signs of this Kevin attitude in other comments on electrification in the White Paper. For example, DfT Rail says that it would not be prudent to commit now to ‘all-or-nothing' projects, such as network-wide electrification or a high-speed line, for which the

longer-term benefits are currently uncertain and which could delay tackling the current strategic priorities such as capacity'.

But of course, electrification projects are not ‘all-or-nothing'. And the ‘call' is for a rolling programme, not ‘Network-wide electrification'. And, as the White Paper admits, electrification increases capacity.

A rolling programme extends the wires progressively over time, starting with the routes giving the highest benefit. As the mileage grows the network benefits kick in. Electrification of the Midland Main line to Sheffield , opens the way to Derby-Birmingham, and so on.

Given all of the above, what are we to make of the reference in the White Paper to keeping the case for ‘more strategic, or network-wide, electrification' under review in preparation for future investment programmes? More dynamic procrastination, I'm afraid. But it's worth noting that DfT Rail prefers ‘strategic' and ‘network-wide' to the ‘rolling programme', for which the case was made an 1981 and remains as strong today.

And now, I promise to make Informed Sources an electrification free zone for the remainder of 2007. Leaving you with this lulu from ‘R'.

Continues.........