Part III – The High-Speed Rail Project’s Environmental Problems

High-Speed Rail and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

As mentioned, the high-speed rail project is now getting significant funding from revenue derived from the state’s greenhouse gas emissions “cap and trade” program under AB 32. In analogy to the federal Clean Air Act, the revenue derives from payments made to the state by greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emitters (primarily industries producing CO2). The payments represent, essentially, a “license to pollute.” In the clean air act, it’s a license to emit one or another air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides, that can harm human (and other living things’) health. For the GHG cap & trade program, it allows the manufacturer to continue to emit CO2 or other GHG contributing to climate change.

Ideally, the payments provide an incentive for producers to reduce their emissions. Hence, they also reduce how much they have to pay for the right to continue emitting GHG. However, if there’s no easy way to reduce the emissions, it’s a cost of production. That cost reduces the profitability of the product creating the emissions. Of course, the emitter can just pass that cost on to consumers. If the product is necessary, the cost of the product will just be increased, at the consumer’s expense.

GHG Auction Revenue Use

The other half of the cap and trade equation is what California does with the revenue from cap & trade auctions. Under AB 32, the revenue is supposed to be used to do things that will reduce GHG emissions. In other words, the GHG emitters are, indirectly, paying for other activities that will reduce GHG emissions. Examples include: paying to take off the market products that produce unnecessarily high amounts of GHG (e.g., inefficient automobiles); paying for activities that will take out of the air (sequester) GHG – such as planting trees; paying for research that will allow future activities to produce less GHG than they do now; or, shifting consumers over from activities that generate lots of GHG to those generating less.

Among that last category, according to the Legislature and former Governor Jerry Brown, is the high-speed rail project. The idea is that, per passenger, high-speed rail emits much less GHG that cars or airplanes. If travelers shift to high-speed rail from airlines and autos, emissions are reduced. That’s the theory. What about the reality? Well, in the long run, that might well be true. Once the HSR system is fully-built and functional, it could, if popular enough, shift enough trips over from cars and airliners, to eventually significantly reduce GHG emissions.

What could go wrong?

There are, however, two large flies trapped in this ointment. One is whether enough people will shift over. While HSR may emit less GHG per passenger-mile than an airliner, high-speed rail trains still need lots of energy. The high-speed rail authority has committed itself to using 100% renewable energy for its electrical power. That’s a noble goal. However, it may also be an expensive one. Unless the Authority pays to build some very large-scale dedicated renewable energy plants, it will be competing with other electricity users for renewable energy. As a result, especially because the high-speed rail lines must operate without a public subsidy, ticket prices will be high. By basic supply and demand, as the price of high-speed rail tickets goes up – especially compared to competing airline and auto travel – patronage will go down. Consequently, so will high-speed rail’s ability to reduce GHG emissions.

GHG Emissions and HSR Construction

The second problem with using high-speed rail to reduce GHG emissions involves the system’s construction. Constructing the high-speed rail system will require massive amounts of two materials: concrete and steel. Each of these, unfortunately, requires a huge amount of GHG emissions for its production.

Producing steel involves multiple steps. First cones digging iron ore out of the ground. Then it must be transported to the steel mill. At the steel mill, the ore is transformed into iron, using coal to remove oxygen and limestone and other additives to remove impurities. Finally, the iron is combined with other metals and additives to produce steel with the required properties. Both the limestone and coal used in steel production produce CO2 as a byproduct. Consequently, steel production releases large amounts of GHG.

The second major source of construction GHG emissions also comes from materials used to build the HSR system. At the high speeds (200 mph or more) at which the HSR is planned to run, safe operation requires the rails to be very precisely aligned. Ballastless track, where the steel rails are locked onto an immovable concrete base, achieves this. The two main components of ballastless track are steel and concrete. The most important component of concrete is cement, or more specifically Portland cement. Portland cement is made from limestone, by heating it (usually using coal, coke, or natural gas) to a very high temperature in a kiln. The heat causes a chemical reaction, releasing one molecule of CO2 for every molecule of limestone (CaCO3), and converting the limestone to lime (CaO) – the main component of Portland cement. Between this chemical reaction and the fuel needed to heat the kiln to the high temperature involved, concrete production releases even more GHG than making steel..

The California High-Speed Rail Authority asserts that its construction activities don’t produce a lot of GHG, because its construction equipment and vehicles are very efficient and low-polluting. Its calculations, however, ignore the huge amounts of GHG emitted in the manufacture of the concrete and steel that are the main components of the construction.

Analysis of GHG Construction Impacts

In 2012, two engineering professors, Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath, did a detailed analysis of how much CO2 would be produced during the construction of California’s high-speed rail line, as well as HSR’s potential to reduce GHG emission by replacing the emissions that passengers would otherwise produce using air or auto transport. (Environ. Res. Lett. 7 (2012) 034012.) Their results indicated a “payback” time of 20 years. (I.e., it would take twenty years of operations taking cars and airplanes out of service to offset the increased GHG emissions during construction). That, however, was based on construction of the full San Francisco to Los Angeles segment, and assumed that construction would take roughly ten years.

Fast forward now to 2019. Construction actually began in 2015, and current estimates are that the Merced to Bakersfield segment won’t be operational until 2029 at the earliest. While the High-Speed Rail Authority has yet to revise completion of San Francisco to Los Angeles from its earlier estimate of 2033, a more realistic timeline is probably 2040 at the earliest. That’s a twenty-five year construction period, rather than ten. Not only that, but Chester and Horvath’s analysis showed that payback time was very dependent on ridership. It is almost universally acknowledged that ridership on the initial Bakersfield-Merced segment will be minimal. It would basically be a demonstration project intended to attract investment into the longer SF-LA segment. Thus “payback” would be based on completion of the full SF-LA segment and would, at best, occur in 2060.

The Tipping Point Problem

Meanwhile, most climate scientists warn that we are fast approaching, if not already past, a “tipping point” for climate change. Once that point is passed, natural processes (including CO2 release from warming oceans and methane release from arctic permafrost) will accelerate GHG emissions. At best, we may have until somewhere between 2025 and 2040 before climate change becomes irreversible. On its new timetable, California’s high-speed rail project won’t help avoid reaching the tipping point. Instead, high-speed rail construction emissions will actually hasten reaching the tipping point.