Speaking at NCE’s Bridges conference on 18 July, Network Rail engineering expert Andy Cross discussed how the way whole life carbon management of bridges
I think you misunderstand what a whole life CO2 assessment is. It factors in the carbon per longetivity. Often you will also be assessing other factors like cost per co2 too.
Rail is a predominantly upfront CO2 cost in infrastructrue for much lower operational CO2 costs and as such these questions are quite important if your job is decarbonisation of Rail.
This is pure green washing, the guy wants to make money with his “alternative” product.
Obviously transportation as a whole emits a lot of CO2. But not so much the infrastructure, since that lasts a long time, so even high initial emissions are quickly irrelevant compared to the emissions of using the infrastructure. Rails, being electric a lot and with low friction, are the best case(?) scenario “against” this. I would still assume that due to the decades of use that the initial upfront CO2 of making railways is somewhat irrelevant.
I think you misunderstand what a whole life CO2 assessment is. It factors in the carbon per longetivity. Often you will also be assessing other factors like cost per co2 too.
Rail is a predominantly upfront CO2 cost in infrastructrue for much lower operational CO2 costs and as such these questions are quite important if your job is decarbonisation of Rail.
This is pure green washing, the guy wants to make money with his “alternative” product.
Obviously transportation as a whole emits a lot of CO2. But not so much the infrastructure, since that lasts a long time, so even high initial emissions are quickly irrelevant compared to the emissions of using the infrastructure. Rails, being electric a lot and with low friction, are the best case(?) scenario “against” this. I would still assume that due to the decades of use that the initial upfront CO2 of making railways is somewhat irrelevant.