Subject: BATTERY NOT HYDROGEN for Line-Haul and Passenger
Trains
Comment: Public Meeting to Consider the Draft 2022 Climate
Change Scoping Plan, June 23, 2022
June 21, 2022:
by Phil Birkhahn, Co-Chair, Transportation Committee of San
Diego 350
Change requested p. 58, “Freight and Passenger Rail, Line
haul and passenger rail rely primarily on hydrogen fuel cell
technology, and others primarily utilize electricity”.
CHANGE “Hydrogen” to “Battery electric or
Hydrogen, depending on new analysis”, not analysis done in
2016.
Change requested, Appendix C, p. 4, Table C-1, “Line haul
and passenger rail rely primarily on hydrogen fuel cell technology,
and others primarily utilize electricity”. CHANGE
“hydrogen” to “ZEV” in all four
Scenarios.
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Assuming hydrogen-powered trains is speculative.
Meanwhile, battery powered trains are lower cost and feasible now,
depending on getting a fair trial on California rail routes.
Battery trains are likely to cost about one-fourth less than
hydrogen trains, just like found in other heavy-duty land
transportation such as Class 8 trucks and buses. Achieving
tolerable operating cost also requires huge reductions in hydrogen
cost promised by 2030, but success of that is
speculation.
Doubling battery capacity by 2030 is a better bet because of
rapid capacity and charge-time progress on a vast front. So
is eliminating plug-in and overhead charging by 2030 using magnetic
resonance or inductance charging that can charge trains moving at
their normal operating speed with no connection at all.
Hydrogen can never do that.
Yet battery trains are not in the plan, while hydrogen trains
are. Battery-powered trains deserve to be included in all
scenarios until the technologies sort themselves out, probably in
favor or battery trains. Other heavy-duty vehicles like
transit buses are already pushing hydrogen aside as transit
agencies vote with their feet. As of 2020, 551 battery buses
were in service and just 38 hydrogen buses (UC Davis). Plans
for 2023 were to add 531 more battery buses and just 8 more
hydrogen buses.
Assigning trains to hydrogen is a rare misstep in the Scoping
Plan Draft and California’s Zero Emission Vehicle
programs. Correct this by adding battery train pilot projects
and subsidies comparable to the hydrogen train program. Call
them ZEVs in the Scoping Plan instead of preempting for
hydrogen.
CARB’s hybrid freight train pilot with BNSF from Barstow
over Tehachapi to Sacramento is a start but replaces only small
part of the diesel. It ignores the potential for batteries to
replace diesel across the full spectrum of rail transportation for
freight and passengers, starting with routes of a few hundred
miles.
REFERENCES
University of California Davis, 2021, CalTrans Research Report:
Fuel Cell Electric Bus, Battery Electric Bus, and Battery Electric
Train Infrastructure, p. 2.