Hydrogen powered zero emission trains in Cali

  •  Sonori   ( @sonori@beehaw.org ) 
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    4 months ago

    You see here, the problem is that trains are just too efficient. So we made an electric train that wastes half the raw electricity by converting it into and than storing a cryogenic liquid, has to have massive on board lithium ion batteries to not overload the fuel cell by doing weird things like accelerating and to capture energy from breaking, and which at best diverts desperately needed non-methane produced hydrogen from the industries that actually can’t just put in highly efficient electric motors and more commonly at worst is more polluting than burning coal.

    This may all be an incredibly expensive and inefficient way to use taxpayer money, but it’s not like the US can afford to put cananary lines over a very short commuter rail line. Overhead electrification is something only very rich and technology advanced countries like Ethiopia and North Korea can achieve, not a poor country like the United States.

    Worse, it uses well understood technology over a century old and so would only take a few years to roll out over the entire amarican rail network, not only completely eliminating the two consumers of Diesel fuel that use more than the entire US military, but halving the operating costs of thouse railways.

    Much better to spend a decade and half a billion dollars to create a pilot program to study the possibility of maybe replacing fossil fuels with a highly limited, more expensive, and less reliable alternative, maybe, in another few decades of burning oil. That’s what all you climate activists wanted, right? /s