NSW rail network to go green by 2025, smaller ferries to go electric

[boronia]

Latest brain fart from Constance:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/ent ... xrxVTDSsI8

[Merc1107]

Quite amusing they are seeking "Renewable Energy Suppliers" to supply the railway network. As if you can choose where exactly where the electricity from some renewable source or another ends up... It's more about fudging percentages of what share renewables have in the energy market.

[ScaniaGrenda]

Oh, another announcement for Sydney, if their serious about wanting to go green they'd consider making the Hunter Line electric while their at it. But no outside of Sydney nothing exists. Sorry to be this way but as an outsider who is not from Sydney, all the talk about Transport up here is non-existent and could do with some more discussion and future planning but that is for another topic.

I know for making the Hunter line electric they'd have to order new trains as the 7 Hunter Sets are diesel & so are the two endeavors they have running up here but given the endeavors only have a few years left in them, now is probably the wise time to start investing in green energy transportation if their really serious and a start would be focusing on outside of Sydney for once.

[tonyp]

We had electric ferries from 1936 to 1985. OK, they needed diesel generators on board but they were electric! We also have quite an extensive electrified railway network but they disconnected freight from it. Put it back - that will achieve quite a lot, more than gifting taxpayers' money to a guilty conscience fund that only enriches middle men. Extend the wires out to where they can be more effective - Muswellbrook, Bathurst, Goulburn, Nowra.

And electric cars are luxury cars. Has Constance become so rich that he's forgotten that a huge part of the population can't afford to spend more than $30,000 on a car? When we start talking about subsidising these "environmental initiatives", we're talking about the poor subsidising the rich. The whole scam hits hardest those who can least afford to pay for it. That's something that Labor parties should think about when they go chasing the green vote and then wonder why the working class is voting Liberal.

[boronia]

On that logic, most of our freight locomotives have been "electric" since the 1950s, and still are. Put a few batteries in them and call them hybrids.

[tonyp]

On that logic, most of our freight locomotives have been "electric" since the 1950s, and still are. Put a few batteries in them and call them hybrids.

That should get us across the line! After all, hybrid buses and cars seem to get some sort of brownie points in return for not very much.

However, you'll never satisfy the environmental warriors. One thing I notice with all these battery-electric buses hitting the news is all the public comments stating contemptuously "but they're actually powered by coal". You'll never satisfy these crazies until the buses only run when the wind is blowing and the sun shining and we're all naked and living in caves. Politicians are fools pandering to this. There are less votes in it than they think. Most people want security, their jobs and personal prosperity. Progressive reduction of adverse environmental impacts should certainly be done, but in a structured way, with the necessary realistic power generation infrastructure (like nuclear power stations) put in place before closing down the old infrastructure.

[Campbelltown busboy]

We had electric ferries from 1936 to 1985. OK, they needed diesel generators on board but they were electric! We also have quite an extensive electrified railway network but they disconnected freight from it. Put it back - that will achieve quite a lot, more than gifting taxpayers' money to a guilty conscience fund that only enriches middle men. Extend the wires out to where they can be more effective - Muswellbrook, Bathurst, Goulburn, Nowra.

And electric cars are luxury cars. Has Constance become so rich that he's forgotten that a huge part of the population can't afford to spend more than $30,000 on a car? When we start talking about subsidising these "environmental initiatives", we're talking about the poor subsidising the rich. The whole scam hits hardest those who can least afford to pay for it. That's something that Labor parties should think about when they go chasing the green vote and then wonder why the working class is voting Liberal.

It sounds like greenie Matt from Hornsby has got in Andy’s ear again

[mandonov]

The only way electric vehicles will cease to be seen as luxury vehicles is once we get a critical mass of demand in this country for EV’s to entice manufacturers to sell their lower end models here. These incentives are a good thing for increasing the uptake of EV’s, and this has been proven worldwide. Australia is an embarrassment when it comes to this transition, and distance is just a cop out, so anything the government can do to increase uptake is a good thing.

Buying renewable energy from the market through credits is the only way large organisations can be certain that the energy they purchase is offset by renewable energy. This is exactly how Sydney Metro is run 100% by renewable energy, or how any large company can claim that. It doesn’t mean there’s a solar panel on every rooftop feeding it directly.

The comments in this thread are quite shocking to me. This forum is quite negative and a downer at the best of times, but Jesus, no one here can even be happy about this transition to renewables?

[ScaniaGrenda]

I hate to say it but you can't ask me to be personally happy about something if it won't affect me. I'm in no way saying that I'm not for this, I am in fact but seeing as I'm outside "Sydney" and this is focused on "Sydney" it's hard for me to be happy at present hence my comment. I feel like people always like to take things out of context and assume the worst. Our time for Transport projects outside of Sydney will come but I'd love for this & future governments to look outside the box and make sure even elsewhere out of Sydney is included.

I'm not saying either they should drop point blank and come up Newcastle way and Electrify everything, even I know that is a heavy & costly task & won't happen overnight but everything seems to be "Sydney" This "Sydney" that. I really don't hold much faith if they want to pretend those who don't live in Sydney don't exist.

I'm really tired too where if I make one comment where I don't appear to be happy, people tend to think negativity of me. Maybe I'll hush up and keep to myself in the future.

[moa999]

And electric cars are luxury cars..

Current models available in Australia. Yes.

Other than maybe the MG HS EV which is under $50k (albeit still $20k more expensive than the similar equipped petrol model)

But you've got TrueGreen/ BYD talking about bringing in a $35k car.

And remember on Total Cost of Ownership over say 10 years - the fuel (particularly if you can use home solar or overnight rates) and maintenance costs are way lower.
And I suspect the depreciation hit will be less than similar priced petrol vehicles.

And in China they have plenty of $10k short range electric cars in the cities (granted these are little more than golf carts with doors and almost no safety features) but it does show what you can do if you think differently.

[tonyp]

The only way electric vehicles will cease to be seen as luxury vehicles is once we get a critical mass of demand in this country for EV’s to entice manufacturers to sell their lower end models here. These incentives are a good thing for increasing the uptake of EV’s, and this has been proven worldwide. Australia is an embarrassment when it comes to this transition, and distance is just a cop out, so anything the government can do to increase uptake is a good thing.

Buying renewable energy from the market through credits is the only way large organisations can be certain that the energy they purchase is offset by renewable energy. This is exactly how Sydney Metro is run 100% by renewable energy, or how any large company can claim that. It doesn’t mean there’s a solar panel on every rooftop feeding it directly.

The comments in this thread are quite shocking to me. This forum is quite negative and a downer at the best of times, but Jesus, no one here can even be happy about this transition to renewables?

Negative, or practical and equitable? When we talk about incentives and subsidies we're talking about use of taxes as the source of funding for those. Taxes are paid by every person with an income in the country whether they're rich or poor. The point is that these subsidies don't bring the cost of renewables (whether cars or solar panels) down to a level that people with lower incomes can afford. Only people with more money can afford them, so in reality you're talking about poorer people subsidising richer people. Once upon a time that would have been called an injustice and the socialist side of politics would be up in arms about it, but nowadays the left seems to be right into it and the conservative side of politics is the one defending the workers. The world has gone mad.

The second issue is that nobody is seriously against reducing environmental impacts as much as possible. Even most of the people who are advocating keeping coal fired power stations operating are typically basing that on the presumption that it would be only for so long as it takes to set in place new baseload power generation that's as reliable and cheap, but with no impact on the environment. The only systems that fulfill that to the necessary extent are hydro and nuclear power. We don't have too much of the former in Australia (excepting Tasmania), but we have ample scope for the latter. Any headlong rush into systems with less capacity, reliability and higher cost to the consumer than these amounts to economic destruction and political suicide for the country. It's really offensive to tar people who advocate a sensible, structured approach to a goal of "zero emission" energy with the brush of being rednecks. It's not a constructive way to carry forward the discussion.

The cheapest (lower-end) electric cars in Europe, which has quite a substantial uptake of them (the largest in the world, currently nearly 25% of new car purchases, including hybrids), is about $AUD 45,000, with most still way north of that. As you would appreciate, a huge percentage of the car-buying population rely on being able to buy a car that costs far less than that, even half that price. It's still going to take some years for price parity to be achieved and the downside is that this will be achieved partly by killing off the cheap end of the market (viz.the cheap petrol car) because those models are too expensive and the margins too small to manufacture as electric vehicles. A lot of less well-off people will find themselves deprived of the ability to buy a new car. Environmentalism is a game that benefits the rich.

Sydney Metro runs largely on coal and you know it. Carbon certificates/credits, whatever they're called, are just bs that helps enrich middle men. When people see an opportunity to make money out of nothing they latch onto it and government (taxpayers') subsidies help hand it to them on a plate. I very much wish they'd stop subsidising the domestic solar game. It gets on my goat seeing people with more money saving on electricity bills at the cost of poorer people who get stuck with them and pay more over time because they can't afford a solar system (including the one third of home occupiers who are tenants, because no landlord will incur a capital cost that won't benefit them and reduces their returns).

None of what I've written above is negative. It just says that the transition to low environmental impact energy has to be done properly and equitably. I would see that as being positive. Further impoverishing a large section of society and reducing reliability of systems is not an achievement and is a definite negative.

[grog]

There is so much wrong with that post that I don’t know where to start…

[boronia]

It's just another brain fart from Constance, you'll get over it LOL

[Linto63]

Oh, another announcement for Sydney, if their serious about wanting to go green they'd consider making the Hunter Line electric while their at it. But no outside of Sydney nothing exists.

Sydney does account for 60% of the state's population, not to mention being the most pollution prone part of the state, so does stand to reason.

I know for making the Hunter line electric they'd have to order new trains as the 7 Hunter Sets are diesel & so are the two endeavors they have running up here but given the endeavors only have a few years left in them

The carbon footprint of the Hunter DMUs is a drop in the ocean compared to that of the coal trains. If the Hunter line is to be electrified, it will be to enable the conversion of the latter. The business case for electrifying for a twice hourly DMU service would be poor.

We had electric ferries from 1936 to 1985. OK, they needed diesel generators on board but they were electric!

Semantics, for all intents and purposes they were diesels, or in the context of this discussion, would have had very similar fuel consumption and emission levels as a straight diesel engine.

And electric cars are luxury cars. Has Constance become so rich that he's forgotten that a huge part of the population can't afford to spend more than $30,000 on a car?

The price of electric cars will come down. Few if any manufacturers will be producing diesel or petrol cars by the mid-2030s as the countries ban their sale.

Environmentalism is a game that benefits the rich.

And is also something that many people are very concerned about. While climate change deniers will just brush it off, the increase in catastrophic climatic events we have seen recently cannot be just a coincidence.

[ScaniaGrenda]

I really beg to differ, something that I have seen time & time again is we're always so deadset about the present but not the future, if we're not preparing for the future we are only going to be kicking ourselves when the actual time does come & the transportation network bottlenecks itself and we start asking why didn't we prepare sooner?

I surely hope with all the ongoing developments around here the Hunter Line will not be reliant on two car DMU's for the rest of my life, they'll need to upgrade to four cars to meet demand (early morning and afternoon rush) and at that point I'd consider looking into eco-friendly options if they really really want to make it look like they care.

I'd still be on the page as well that the Hunter line won't always need four car operations at every hour of the day but having been on the packed train here lots of times, I can already say we really should start investing in upgrades. Anyway this is all for another topic

Also this article is as clickbaity as crap, entire NSW Train Network to be green by 2025, well we've already now just discussed that the Hunter Line won't see anything so this is not entire NSW rail network. Should've just said "Entire Sydney Trains network". Really really tired of these sorts of things but whatever generates hype I guess.

[tonyp]

And is also something that many people are very concerned about. While climate change deniers will just brush it off, the increase in catastrophic climatic events we have seen recently cannot be just a coincidence.

I've been an environmentalist and electric transit advocate for decades. The need for action was well-established half a century ago, we don't need any new justification, just to keep progressing it - but in a structured, sensible way that is open to new ideas, doesn't result in economic damage and doesn't create hardship for the most vulnerable in society. What I have a problem with is the current obsession with destroying existing structures as soon as possible, before proper solutions have been implemented to replace them. Some aspects of the current push have become fanatical, divisive and almost totalitarian, especially the shutting down of debate. That's deeply concerning. The world had enough of that in the 20th century and we still have it with China, we don't need more of it. Discussion and open enquiry leads to better solutions, it should be welcomed.

Fortunately, with transit at least, the solutions have actually been there for a very long time and have been improved and further developed. There's no problem with the basis of what Constance is saying, even if it's sometimes erratically expressed. I'm amused to hear that he was obviously told by the marine professionals that the weight of batteries needed to propel a big ship would possibly sink it. However, there's no problem taking small steps first and applying the technology to smaller boats. Later it may become possible with bigger boats. The key saying should be that Rome wasn't built in a day. We have to work step by step towards it without destroying everything in our path.

My thought for the day, however, is that we could stop buying diesel rigid buses right now. Any diesel bus bought today will still be running in 2040 and that's too long. The solution for buses up to 12 metres is here right now and perfectly viable, once they sort out depot design for charging and as long as electricity supply doesn't get stuffed one way or the other.

[Campbelltown busboy]

For this to work the state government first needs to ask the rail freight operators to green up their loco fleets then our transport minister needs to talk to the federal transport minster about where the federal government stands on the idea of ordering the ARTC to rollout the NSW idea nationally

[grog]

FYI this has been out for a little while https://future.transport.nsw.gov.au/pla ... y-strategy

[tonyp]

For this to work the state government first needs to ask the rail freight operators to green up their loco fleets then our transport minister needs to talk to the federal transport minster about where the federal government stands on the idea of ordering the ARTC to rollout the NSW idea nationally

Just to keep things in perspective, the impact of freight locos and dmu passenger railcars is absolutely microscopic compared to the road fleets that do the great bulk of the work. They're not the highest priority. Those things will come when the rail freight agencies and operators come to the party on extending the wires and then being willing to change locos at the outer ends of an electric system, like say Goulburn, Bathurst and Maitland/Muswellbrook. The financial equation has to add up and that includes cheap, reliable electricity. For the urban and interurban public transport task, the greatest area of need for change is (and has been since they closed the previous tram system in 1961) street public transport and that of course means buses.

[Stu]

Battery powered trains would reduce the need to extend the current electric line infrastructure which would be costly.

https://rail.bombardier.com/en/about-us ... y-power/en

[Transtopic]

For this to work the state government first needs to ask the rail freight operators to green up their loco fleets then our transport minister needs to talk to the federal transport minster about where the federal government stands on the idea of ordering the ARTC to rollout the NSW idea nationally

Just to keep things in perspective, the impact of freight locos and dmu passenger railcars is absolutely microscopic compared to the road fleets that do the great bulk of the work. They're not the highest priority. Those things will come when the rail freight agencies and operators come to the party on extending the wires and then being willing to change locos at the outer ends of an electric system, like say Goulburn, Bathurst and Maitland/Muswellbrook. The financial equation has to add up and that includes cheap, reliable electricity. For the urban and interurban public transport task, the greatest area of need for change is (and has been since they closed the previous tram system in 1961) street public transport and that of course means buses.

I basically agree with what you're saying Tony, but rather than buying new electric locos requiring a change at the end of the wires to the d/e, why not mandate that all new freight locos should be hybrid d/e so that they can run on both wired and unwired sections of track without changing locos? As you know, this is what's happening with the new Regional train fleet.

As the wires are extended in NSW, which is ultimately proposed to Nowra, Goulburn, Bathurst and Maitland, greater use would be made for electric haulage on some of the most challenging grades surrounding Sydney. An electric freight haul from Maitland to Goulburn would be over some 400km and Bathurst to Sydney 200km on the steeper grades, which is not to be sneezed at.

There is probably a limit to how far electrification could be viably extended, but as you point out, the impact of freight locos and dmu passenger railcars is absolutely microscopic compared to road fleets. Nonetheless, the extension of electrification in NSW and conversion to a hybrid or pure electric locomotive fleet will be a slow process, but it could still have a significant impact on reducing emissions over time.

I can't envisage Inland rail going completely electric in the foreseeable future nor the Hunter Valley coal lines, as the demand for coal reduces.

Hybrid electric/battery power may be the longer term option for the unelectrified network.