Drawdown Shows Transit and EVs Can Cut Transport Emissions

2021-12-03 original Science

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

“Drawdown” is a project-style book led by an American writer, with contributions from researchers around the world. It lays out ways to achieve “drawdown”—the point at which atmospheric carbon dioxide starts to decrease—and splits broadly into an overview of what’s already being done and an introduction to future technologies. The section on the current situation shocked me personally, since I hadn’t known the details of many of the items, or hadn’t even recognized them at all. It deserves to be called required reading for working adults. At over 400 pages in two-column format, though, it runs to a solid three ordinary books’ worth, and even I, a fairly fast reader, took more than a month to finish it.

So I’d like to extract and organize the essence of it to some degree. Either way, it’s a perfect book for grasping the big picture.

Here I’ll cover the transportation sector.

Public Transit

In American metropolitan areas, public transit ridership is under 5%. In Singapore and London it’s about half. Public transit is attractive from a carbon standpoint, but it requires cities to become denser, which runs counter to urban sprawl, the pattern most cities actually follow.

The Shinkansen delivers a very large carbon reduction effect, but cost issues hold back progress. California’s high-speed rail project has also seen its costs double, with no end in sight. Routes where high-speed rail actually turns a profit are, in fact, limited worldwide. Construction itself also uses huge amounts of cement, so the emissions are unavoidable.

Curitiba, Brazil is a model city. Fares are paid in advance, boarding points are scattered throughout the city, dedicated bus lanes keep traffic moving, and naturally the transport capacity (passengers × distance) exceeds that of private cars.

Mayor Jaime Lerner put it this way: “If you want creativity, cut one zero from the budget. If you want sustainability, cut two.”

Electric Vehicles

The concept itself dates back to the era of Edison and Henry Ford, but it never came to fruition because battery development didn’t advance. In the early days of the automobile, internal combustion, electric, and steam were on equal footing. Then Ford’s manufacturing power drove down the cost of internal combustion vehicles, and the discovery of oil fields within the United States lowered gasoline costs, and internal combustion won out as a result.

Electric bicycles became popular in China in the 1990s, when air pollution had grown terrible, but inadequate recycling of the lead-acid batteries became a problem.

Ride sharing actually began during World War II, when carpooling to work was encouraged to conserve resources. It drew attention again in the 1970s over air pollution concerns, and that period produced carpool lanes—special lanes that bypass congestion, open only to cars carrying two or more people, common in the US.

Trucks

Trucks make up 4% of vehicles by count and about 9% of distance traveled, but they account for 25% of emissions: their fuel efficiency is terrible. Switching to the latest fuel-efficient vehicles is known to pay for itself in one to two years. Split incentives often get in the way, though, since the person who invests in the vehicle is often not the person who benefits from the fuel savings.

Airplanes

Airplanes are the hardest category for cutting fossil fuel use, with emissions said to run 47 times those of shipping. A shift to biojet fuel offers hope, but both cost and infrastructure are far from ready. Requiring airlines to submit fuel efficiency data has succeeded in reducing consumption, through efforts such as cutting the time planes spend circling in level flight before landing.

Bunker Fuel

This residue left over from oil refining is sometimes used in shipping. It’s high in sulfur and a source of particulate matter. No standards or regulations currently govern carbon emissions from ship operations.

[New Technologies and New Initiatives]

Hyperloop

Elon Musk’s concept, backed by $5.5 billion in investment. The plan is to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles, running trains inside depressurized tubes to complete the trip in 35 minutes.

The original idea came from Robert Goddard, a rocket scientist working in the 1910s.

Power consumption comes in a groundbreaking 90% lower than conventional systems, but even a slight curve subjects passengers to dangerous G-forces, so the route basically has to run in a straight line, and securing flat, straight land is extremely difficult.

The Ray

A project by Interface, originally a carpet manufacturer. EVs charge while driving.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2021/12/820/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.