Rail Freight Companies Mothball Their Electric Locomotives

[mushroom25]

something the mainstream media hasn't picked up on yet, just in the trade papers for now

https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2021/10/13/freightliner-takes-down-electric-locs-due-to-high-electricity-prices/

Freightliner announced that this morning, and since publication DRS have done the same.
when the transport industry is doing its best to decarbonise it seems a strange thing to do, but the reason is one of pure economics. the wholesale cost of electricity has risen 210% in the last month, and rail freight can no longer afford to operate them.

The article goes on to say that the only reliable high-volume power generation source is gas, which explains the steep cost rise. this rather flies in the face of what the government and the environmental lobby tell us about how self-sufficient we are in windmills and other sustainable sources of power generation. well clearly we're not.

electric passenger trains are not affected yet because the operating companies are protected by a price cap. This is unlikely to persist long-term though and there are bound to be problems later on, particularly for operators who have no diesel trains.

Of course, with COP26 coming up, could this just be the industry holding a gun to the government's head and hoping they'll cave-in to save any environmental embarrassment?

[jno]

the Independent is reasonably mainstream

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-energy-prices-crisis-rail-diesel-b1937543.html

[archibaldy]

// the only reliable high-volume power generation source is gas //

Hardly reliable in terms of price, we have to pay 'todays price' come what may since we don't produce much ourselves and this Government decided to cut our storage to just 7 days as compared to the 3 months storage that France and Germany have.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10023523/Ministers-spot-let-Britain-effectively-shut-gas-storage.html

[jno]

we're not currrently doing well with wind, unfortunately: there hasn't been much this year and wind farms aren't produccing as much power as expected. This could change at any moment, but wind isn't reliable, clearly.

[youngmafbog]

Bottom line is its down to Johnsons (or Carrie Antoinette's) Green policies.

Whiles laudable (for me in the pollution sense) they are not realistic and crippling your economy especially after something like COVID19 is quite frankly criminal. There needs to be a better plan, and using energy from abroad(either directly or in manufacture of products) so your own 'Carbon footprint' is lower is not one.