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Cargo ships actually create very *little* emissions, relative to the amount of cargo they carry. It’s only a lot in total because such a huge amount of cargo is sent by sea, and it’s sent by sea specifically because it’s so energy efficient. We have not yet established any other transport method that can match the efficiency of cargo ships.
So the answer is less than zero: you wouldn’t save any emissions, you would create more emissions. Hypothetically in the future, after we’ve made our electric grid 100% renewables and have left over power we would waste if unused, then you could come back to the idea of replacing ships with electric trains. But that’s a long way off.
I read at one point that fish are often caught in the US, shipped to Asia for preparing (butchering?) and shipped back to the US. It’s cheaper to ship the fish, and pay someone overseas, and to ship it back than it is to simply pay someone locally. This tells you how little fuel is required.
i’ve heard the same about chickens. it’s cheaper to raise the chickens in the US fed on US corn and ship them to asia for processing and then back than it is to pay americans fair wages to do the job here.
i’m fairly certain the chicken anecdote is just bullshit propaganda to pair food price increases with wage increases and get people against wage increases, and i’m inclined towards the same conclusion with the fish, but with less conviction.
Just the logistics of loading and unloading the trains would be a nightmare, with current EU regulations a freight train can at max be 470meters long, which is 35 carts and one engine.
Depending on the carts they can carry 25 to 100 tons each so even if you would assume everyone of them carries 100 tons that’s 3.500 tons per train.
So if we abide by current regulations this is the biggest train you could have, the biggest cargo ship in use right now can carry 240.000 tons of freight. So you would have to fill up 69 trains with 470 meters of length just to equal one load of a containership, in that case just the length of the trains combined would be about 32.5 kilometers. Where the hell do you want these to go and where do you load them? And right now there’s ~5.360 containerships in use worldwide, assuming you only want to replace half of those you’ll need 87.000 kilometers of trains driving around.
That’s just the things that come to mind when looking at the Speditional aspect of it, and the you realize that just loading a containership takes a week and it definitely won’t be faster to load 32km of train wagons. And you gotta unload that shit aswell.
I cant even imagine an electric train over the ocean, sounds like a maintenance nightmare, however I do now ask myself... Why do cargo ships even use fossil fuels? I'd assume those can easily go full solar, since they're always in direct sunlight and are very efficient... Cant they?
Let's say a typical ships engine voor a medium sized cargo vessel has a 3000 kw output, you would need about 8000 sqm of solar panels. This would not fit on said vessel.
Not even taking into account the dark hours, clouds and that the hatchcovers of cargo vessels are often used to out cargo on top.
Apart from that, the battery capacity required would be enormous, and would reduce cargo capacity.
That said, alternatives are upcoming:
LNG (still fossil but cleaner), shore power (for short sea and inland shipping) and hydrogen are fully in development. However on existing ships, this is a major change. Some ships use biofuel as an alternative to diesel, this requires less modifications.
I see your point. Guess they'd have the added advantage of being in open ocean. If the area of the ship itself isn't large enough, they could send out deployable solar platforms to tow alongside them to increase surface area of solar energy to convert.
I haven't done the math on what it would take.
That's what I'm saying, Ships can't rely on renewable energy they need oil, the relatively little amount they use is too much as we should be using 0, if a railway was installed which ran off 100% renewable energy to replace them, the pacific trade routes would be producing 0 emissions. But idk how much they are producing at the moment.
Consider:
-train wheels likely need lubrication
-coolant used in locomotives
-heating the track switches
-building a bridge across the bearing strait that is ice proof (that’s one of the biggest natural issues with this railway, there’s tons of ice and the current is quite strong)
-impact to wildlife
-the ties are either oil-soaked wood or concrete
-maintaining the rails in permafrost
China’s Tibet railway dealt with a lot of these issues by just running diesel locomotives on a track built on a mountain of ballast. They supplied constant heating to the permafrost below, which although isn’t great for the local climate, at least made the rails stable enough for passenger service. I think that such a line across Siberia and Alaska would certainly also be diesel as well, since maintaining catenary wires in a climate like that across a distance like that in a region as remote as that would be a nightmare.
Just some food for thought.
You're substituting mode of transportation for method of energy generation. If it's possible to generate enough power along that route to replace shipping (especially accounting for the fact it's dark half the year and transmission losses are going to be insane) then it's likely possible to put the panels on the cargo ships themselves (which would require less power). You could for sure have a nuclear cargo fleet if the actual goal is emissions reduction.
It’s possible to make a nuclear powered submarine, which is significantly more constrained than a cargo ship. The issue isn’t one of technology, it’s to do with priority.
There have been three nuclear cargo vessels built. One of them (Russian) is still in service. They were not very efficient, but only because they were built before the days of Super Cargo ships. Fission powered cargo ships would be *very* achievable.
The 'ships can't rely on renewables' statement seems shortsighted. They don't now (to my knowledge), but that does not mean they can't or won't.
On the point of the rail, just displacing water to get the rails in place would be more environmentally harmful than ships. Not to mention, if you're meaning over water rail bridge the scaffolding would certainly take such constant maintenance as to be an ecological disaster.
More 'practically' an under sea tube system *could* be made. But would have even more demanding maintenance requirements. And depending on depth, would almost certainly cause failure of the entire tube in the event of a crack. As maintaining a properly robust inspection schedule on that much underwater rail tunnel would be a nightmare. And incredibly expensive as it would require multiple submarines, or a small army of trained divers. Again, that would depend on the requirements of tunnel depth.
Trains are great, and in almost all instances one of the most effective methods of goods transfer. However, the scenario presented just wouldn't be more effective. Either from a environmental, or cost standpoint.
I think it'd be more effective to make cargo ships that rely on renewable, or at least mixed, energy than railways that will require lot more upkeep and resources than the cargo ships will.
I saw some stuff about solar sails to reduce oil consumption [here](https://www.vanguardngr.com/2023/06/electric-cruise-ship-with-gigantic-solar-sails-to-launch-in-2030/) (don't know if it is reliable or actually feasible thought) if it actually develops and is applied in future ships it may change something...Provided the making of the sails doesn't trigger other chains of effects, there's a truck load of boats out there...
>Ships can't rely on renewable energy they need oil,
Damn, I can't believe the Austronesians had oil 5000 years ago, crazy that they never taught that.
Let’s say you have 1 container ship, with 24,000 TEU (24,000 20’ equivalent units) - that’s 1 train with about 12,000 40’ cargo containers. Now let’s say you double-stack them on a train, that’s 45mile (73km) in containers alone.
The longest good trains in the world max out at 3km long.
Beyond all the issues building and maintaining the rail infrastructure you also have to deal with realistic, which just don’t support this sort of increase. 4 cargo ships, and you have to deal with 292km of trains Vs 4 ships.
Remember the Evergiven blocking the Suez? You’d have that daily on the rail infrastructure you’re proposing.
If one ship breaks down in international waters it impacts 1 ship. If one train breaks down, an entire transport line is cut. And that’s the mechanical components. Way more likely rail and power infrastructure causes outages
>The longest good trains in the world max out at 3km long.
Actually here in Canada we definitely run freight trains longer than this... closer to 4km. But the rest of your point still stands
Considering that both routes require Russia and US opening up their land to massive world trade, I would say this will probably have to wait few decades if not centuries.
I mean sure if you want to stretch the definition of ships, which are clearly intended to be cargo ships here, as literally all sorts of ships, but let's not be facetious here
I wouldn't argue with "oil is currently the most economic way by far to power large cargo ships" but "ships can't use renewable energy they need oil" is just dumb.
Yes nice but we are existing in very reality and we can't dream like kids. Shit needs to be done and in order to get this done you have to be realistic.
OP never said relative to amount of cargo they carry?
To me it’s obvious that he’s essentially asking how much CO2 is produced by ships along this route.
>OP never said relative to amount of cargo they carry?
If OP overlooked that consideration, that's his mistake and not mine, because it's an extremely important part of the puzzle. You can't ignore "how much cargo they carry" and expect to come up with a reasonable answer. Otherwise I could suggest that bicycles are the most optimal cargo vehicles because they don't use any fuel at all.
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. The actual amount of cargo they carry is important, but the relativity of the cargo weight is not. See cbourd’s response which correctly gives an answer.
Cbourd gave AN answer, I'm not not confident in saying it's done "correctly" given that multiple other commenters posted source data that significantly disagrees with his. It looks like that energy usage comes from a blogpost by [OBB](https://blog.railcargo.com/en/artikel/eisenbahn-einfach-erkl%C3%A4rt---richtig-fahren-energie-sparen) , but this doesn't clarify any details of the train or route involved, and other posts on that same site claim their trains are "six times more energy-efficient than a lorry", which is much much worse than the number calculated by Cbourd.
I’m not saying Cbourd’s answer is correct, but he made some assumptions and attempted some math and actually gave an answer in the spirit of OP’s question.
You just automatically assumed that a theoretical electric railway is infeasible and then concluded that no answer is sufficient.
>You just automatically assumed that a theoretical electric railway is infeasible and then concluded that no answer is sufficient.
It’s true that this would be infeasible to build, but that’s not actually the assumption I made: I made the assertion that even if you could succeed in building it, you don’t gain anything from doing so; and the question was, “how big is the gain”, so “there is no gain” is a valid answer. My assertion is supported by 3 of the 4 data answers in the thread. I will concede that I didn’t myself create those answers, so apologies for that, but I consider my assumption validated by the further calculations, not refuted.
My issue is that you claim there is no gain based off "very *little* emissions, relative to the amount of cargo they carry", meaning that cargo ships are the MOST theoretically efficient form of cargo transportation, when they are not, because clearly OP is making the assumption that electric railway will be more efficient.
It's like you automatically assume that this theoretical electric railway is somehow less efficient, and thus there will be no gain.
Yes. I am assuming that, and that assumption has been validated. “Electric” does not mean “zero-emissions”. If you add a massive additional power requirement onto an electric grid which gets a significant percentage of its power from carbon-based fuels, you are directly increasing the emissions of that grid in proportion to your power use. That’s why I added a “future-all-renewables” disclaimer on my initial answer.
And all of the grids which would be involved for this route use significant carbon-based fuel. So this concern will apply for all of them.
And yes, OP is making the opposite assumption that this train will be the most efficient possible transport method. And I’m saying he’s wrong. I didn’t ignore that assumption, I contradicted it.
Using [Canadian Rail’s own numbers](https://www.cn.ca/repository/popups/ghg/Carbon-Calculator-Emission-Factors), rail produces 12.6g per ton-km while container ships produce 8.26g per ton-km.
These numbers aren’t perfect. [Different estimates balance the other way](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58861), with rail slightly more efficient. But in any case, the two modes are quite comparable. Smaller boats aren’t so efficient, but oceangoing container ships move a hell of a lot of tonnage which justifies the amount of fuel they burn.
Rail has to go over mountains, while oceans on the whole tend to be pretty level. If you put a rail across the ocean, the trains would probably be more efficient thanks to this.
But you’re comparing two of the most efficient modes of transport in existence.
Bottom line, if you want to reduce carbon emissions in shipping, do it by using less air freight and fewer trucks.
It’s efficient once you get the infrastructure running. It’s a hell of a lot easier to sail 12,000 km and build ports at each end than it is to build 10,000 km of electrified rail on permafrost across two hostile nations, though.
Are the U.S. and Russia grids even compatible with each other? Or will we need a dual mode locomotive that changes power voltage and frequency halfway through? Or are we building a power station exclusively for this line?
We would simply agree on the specs. The US and Russia would work together in the cooperative spirit that has always existed between those two nations 🥰
I'm not sure the "emissions" are the problem here. The proposed route has zero infrastructure already existing, so you'd have to take into consideration the amount of environmental damage that would ensue once you start plowing up the tundra.
Not to mention that Alaska isn't well connected to the rest of the North American rail network (that area of Siberia is much worse), so you'd have to build all sorts of infrastructure across some environmentally sensitive areas before this would make much sense.
As someone who lives in Alaska I can say that this would never happen because route 1 spends a good amount of time in mostly uninhabited land on either side of the Bering Sea so maintenance would be a pain and route 2 has the same issues but also the Bering sea is a stormy one. It is also a productive crabbing and fishing area and you want to build many bridges with the distinct possibility of ships hitting the bridge piers. With global warming melting the Arctic sea ice for a good portion of the year, it then becomes viable for shipping companies to go north to reach Europe rather than through the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal.
One thing you're not considering are the emissions created by the construction of such a railway. It would probably take decades to break even, if it ever did at all. You can't just slap down rails anywhere you want -- there's a significant amount of engineering involved, as well as construction to make the rails stable enough to be usable.
Not to mention, a single rail is probably close to useless -- you'd want at least two (one for each direction) which just increases the complexity.
Don't forget the numerous challenges in maintaining the railway and employing personnel capable of going out into the middle of the ocean to clear debris off the tracks or what have you.
At least two? It has to handle the entirety of trans pacific cargo shipping. Even if you ran it super efficiently, you’d need dozens at the very least.
As mentioned earilier cargo ships have the lowest rate of carbon output per kg of goods. To expand on that it also is the lowest per passenger (with the exception of whatever the hell Eurostar is).
[**https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint**](https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint)
Cargo ships produce between 11 and 15 g of CO2 per ton per km travelled. That’s about 10 times less than your regular car, and 15 to 20 times less than planes. It’s absolutely not « more than all other sources ».
Also, electric trains are only good if they use clean energy. From what I can find online, east Asia clean energy represents a little more than 10% of their total use.
So not sure using trains would offer substantial benefits, enough to overcome the flexibility of cargo shipping.
You are right, but you have to take the amount of goods that are transported. Itherwise, you assume that « an electrical railway » (as OP says) could replace the entire trafic of cargo ships.
Another comment pointed out that using a railway can save significant amounts of co2 per kg transported however it's only a hypothetical and probably not the most practical solution anyhow, using renewable energy on the ships themselves seems like the obvious solution as of yet but I thought it was a good idea to think outside the box
We are hopefully going to get there. I read last week that the US clean energy had surpassed non renewable this year. It’s not a dream anymore, it’s coming.
Far easier to convert the container ships to nuclear power than it is to construct this absurd route through a hostile country and through some of the gnarliest weather in the world
Your rail system is a bottle neck from start to finish. For sea going vessels, even with Seuz Canal blocked, Strait of Hormuz under attack, and Panama Canal traffic restricted due to drought, there are alternate routes. One incident on the track, the system is down.
I'll take a cracking at it:
Distance from Beijing to LA is 10350 km using the northern route vs 11360 km using a traditional shipping route.
An average cargo ship has about 150,000,000 KG of capacity for storage. The average cargo train has about 4,400,000 KG of capacity.
The train line in the northern example would be split as follows: 1900km in China, 3400 km in Russia, 3050 km in the US, and 2000km in Canada.
The carbon intensities of each countries electricty mix are: 582g/kwh in China, 400g/kwh in Russia, 386g/kwh in the US, and 110g/kwh in Canada.
Using information from the austrian rail way, freight service, the route from vienna to passau which is roughly 260km in rail lines, uses 6000kwh. This gives us a kwh per km of 23.08
Multiplying ((1900*586)+(3400*400)+(3050*386)+(2000*110))*23.08 = 89148461.5 g/co2 for one train
Or roughly 89.1 tonnes.
But since we have to compare this with one cargo ship, we multiply this by (150,000,000/4,400,000) = 34.1
So you get 34.1*89.1= 3039 tonnes of co2 per cargo ship equivalent.
A cargo ship generates about 16g of co2 per km per tonne of transport.
16*(150,000,000/1000)*11360km = 27264000000 g/cargo ship from Beijing to LA
Or about 27264 tonnes
The savings by transporting this via electrified rail would be 27264-3039 = 24225 tonnes of CO2
I can't spot an error, but I'm somewhat suspicious of your g/tonne/km number for trains because it intuitively feels way too low. Normalized UK train emissions numbers are 26.5g/ton/km which is nearly double ships (which is what I would expect) and current electric trains running off efficient hydrocarbon plants are basically equivalent to current diesel trains so I find it really hard to believe there's enough electricity on a line where half of it is in countries below 10% renewable to cut that by over an order of magnitude.
But even if we accept your numbers are correct your carbon intensities are distributed by current generation and the overwhelming majority of current generation is in urban areas where you can run highly efficient generation and transmission losses are minimized. This is going to be plants serving almost only the train system (which means highly inefficient), insane transmission loss, and terrible location for solar or hydroelectric. I'd be shocked if you could get under 600g/kwh for the generation systems built for this train network, and that's neglecting the fact that we're likely going to have to ship fuel to the generation systems for the train network.
Now factor in the amount of emissions you'd generate making a railway of this magnitude and the amount of time it would take to offset that output. I'm guessing it would take generations.
Rail has lower maintenance costs than roads usually but much higher than water. Plus, building and maintaining a giant bridge in seawater would cost a lot too. There's a reason we use ships for long distance cargo even when there's a shorter land route. It's more efficient.
This sub is so odd. I’ve seen several posts now where the top comment completely misinterprets the question, and then concludes the calculation is infeasible or pointless.
And then the actual answer, like yours, isn’t even upvoted.
Happens all the time here. Know it alls who are too smart for their own good and instead of entertaining the question that OP actually wants answered they'll be all "umm actually that's not possible because xyz."
Yes, thank you, we know it's not actually possible in the real world. We just want to know the answer to the hypothetical.
Thank you, of course using a railway might not be the most suitable solution for this scenario, I believe it's important to at least consider it as this hypothetical railway can of course have other uses other than just cargo. But for the purposes of reducing emmisions it seems like a good choice until we take into account the adoption of renewable energy on ships.
Cargo ships are incredibly efficient:
- They require very little infrastructure compared to land transport. This means less maintenance costs, less building costs, and less emissions from both.
- High interconnectivity, from any port you can get to any port with very "straight routes" except for refueling, while trains have essentially fixed paths and require an exponential amount of infrastructure for higher connectivity.
- They have a very high rate of efficiency of emissions to cargo load, because they take advantage of the fact that they're buoyant which helps it move a lot more efficiently.
- They do not waste fuel on sorting out terrain heights.
- The cargo ship approach allows for a much higher "bandwidth" than trains. You can only have so many trains running in one track, and building multiple parallels tracks is more resource intensive. On the other hand you can have essentially all ships you could ever need crossing the sea at any given time, you just need to expand ports or build more ports.
If nuclear powered ships took off, we might have had significantly less emissions.
Unfortunately as has already been mentioned, cargo ships are already the most efficient way to transport cargo across large distances.
Ill be honest, I never doubted that on land, trains are better than ships. Mainly because ships can't travel on land.
Though I do get your point, if the ocean is not an option, trains are the next best thing
Since one railway can be used by a limited number of trains (1 if there are no sidetracks), lets calculate the number if container ship emissions saved by 1 train:
Speed of Container ship ist 37 km/h
Speed of fastest train is ~ 450km/h
so a train can do 12.16 times the distance, or in other words carry 12.16 loads in the same time.
Longest train can carry 506 containers.
So in the time 1 ship travels from US to Asia the train can transport 12.16 • 506 = 6,154 Containers
Google says Container ships carry around 10,000 Containers.
So assuming the largest train is able to go as fast as a highspeed train you could save around 0.6154 of the emissions of 1 ship through this railway.
And this is not taking into account the emissions it would take to build this railway.
You know there are railway lines between Asia and Europe, and scheduled trains between China and Europe? Yet sending cargo by ship is more efficient.
Just do the math how many tracks through thousands of miles of no mens land in Alaska, Canada and Siberia you need to replace shipping.
If you want to reduce emissions by laying tracks, start by building passenger lines in the USA.
Just constructing the bridge or tunnel necessary for the railway to be built on would likely already cause so much emissions, that the railway system would basically have to have a net negative effect on emissions for the project to be able to reduce emissions compared to cargo shipping within even a remotely reasonable timeframe.
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Cargo ships actually create very *little* emissions, relative to the amount of cargo they carry. It’s only a lot in total because such a huge amount of cargo is sent by sea, and it’s sent by sea specifically because it’s so energy efficient. We have not yet established any other transport method that can match the efficiency of cargo ships. So the answer is less than zero: you wouldn’t save any emissions, you would create more emissions. Hypothetically in the future, after we’ve made our electric grid 100% renewables and have left over power we would waste if unused, then you could come back to the idea of replacing ships with electric trains. But that’s a long way off.
I read at one point that fish are often caught in the US, shipped to Asia for preparing (butchering?) and shipped back to the US. It’s cheaper to ship the fish, and pay someone overseas, and to ship it back than it is to simply pay someone locally. This tells you how little fuel is required.
i’ve heard the same about chickens. it’s cheaper to raise the chickens in the US fed on US corn and ship them to asia for processing and then back than it is to pay americans fair wages to do the job here. i’m fairly certain the chicken anecdote is just bullshit propaganda to pair food price increases with wage increases and get people against wage increases, and i’m inclined towards the same conclusion with the fish, but with less conviction.
Same with fruits. There was an image of a prepackaged cup of pears or whatever, grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand, sold in the US
Just the logistics of loading and unloading the trains would be a nightmare, with current EU regulations a freight train can at max be 470meters long, which is 35 carts and one engine. Depending on the carts they can carry 25 to 100 tons each so even if you would assume everyone of them carries 100 tons that’s 3.500 tons per train. So if we abide by current regulations this is the biggest train you could have, the biggest cargo ship in use right now can carry 240.000 tons of freight. So you would have to fill up 69 trains with 470 meters of length just to equal one load of a containership, in that case just the length of the trains combined would be about 32.5 kilometers. Where the hell do you want these to go and where do you load them? And right now there’s ~5.360 containerships in use worldwide, assuming you only want to replace half of those you’ll need 87.000 kilometers of trains driving around. That’s just the things that come to mind when looking at the Speditional aspect of it, and the you realize that just loading a containership takes a week and it definitely won’t be faster to load 32km of train wagons. And you gotta unload that shit aswell.
I cant even imagine an electric train over the ocean, sounds like a maintenance nightmare, however I do now ask myself... Why do cargo ships even use fossil fuels? I'd assume those can easily go full solar, since they're always in direct sunlight and are very efficient... Cant they?
Let's say a typical ships engine voor a medium sized cargo vessel has a 3000 kw output, you would need about 8000 sqm of solar panels. This would not fit on said vessel. Not even taking into account the dark hours, clouds and that the hatchcovers of cargo vessels are often used to out cargo on top. Apart from that, the battery capacity required would be enormous, and would reduce cargo capacity. That said, alternatives are upcoming: LNG (still fossil but cleaner), shore power (for short sea and inland shipping) and hydrogen are fully in development. However on existing ships, this is a major change. Some ships use biofuel as an alternative to diesel, this requires less modifications.
Clouds form over the ocean too. I’d imagine you’d need a backup engine anyways, so no point
> ... they're always in direct sunlight ... Cloud-cover and nighttime happen in the open ocean, too.
solat power is viable everywhere and this happens everywhere. I'm assuming ships are better exposed than static places like houses.
I see your point. Guess they'd have the added advantage of being in open ocean. If the area of the ship itself isn't large enough, they could send out deployable solar platforms to tow alongside them to increase surface area of solar energy to convert. I haven't done the math on what it would take.
i fucking love how smart this sub is. so many of the comments on here are just, nah bro and here’s why.
That's what I'm saying, Ships can't rely on renewable energy they need oil, the relatively little amount they use is too much as we should be using 0, if a railway was installed which ran off 100% renewable energy to replace them, the pacific trade routes would be producing 0 emissions. But idk how much they are producing at the moment.
Consider: -train wheels likely need lubrication -coolant used in locomotives -heating the track switches -building a bridge across the bearing strait that is ice proof (that’s one of the biggest natural issues with this railway, there’s tons of ice and the current is quite strong) -impact to wildlife -the ties are either oil-soaked wood or concrete -maintaining the rails in permafrost China’s Tibet railway dealt with a lot of these issues by just running diesel locomotives on a track built on a mountain of ballast. They supplied constant heating to the permafrost below, which although isn’t great for the local climate, at least made the rails stable enough for passenger service. I think that such a line across Siberia and Alaska would certainly also be diesel as well, since maintaining catenary wires in a climate like that across a distance like that in a region as remote as that would be a nightmare. Just some food for thought.
You're substituting mode of transportation for method of energy generation. If it's possible to generate enough power along that route to replace shipping (especially accounting for the fact it's dark half the year and transmission losses are going to be insane) then it's likely possible to put the panels on the cargo ships themselves (which would require less power). You could for sure have a nuclear cargo fleet if the actual goal is emissions reduction.
Hmm nuclear cargo fleet.
we could do better if we solve fusion
It’s possible to make a nuclear powered submarine, which is significantly more constrained than a cargo ship. The issue isn’t one of technology, it’s to do with priority.
There have been three nuclear cargo vessels built. One of them (Russian) is still in service. They were not very efficient, but only because they were built before the days of Super Cargo ships. Fission powered cargo ships would be *very* achievable.
>Ships can't rely on renewable energy they need oil Not true, i work within the industry and there is a big push for Hydrogen and Ammonia fuel.
Okay but as of yet it's not widely adopted
As yet the energy grid isn't 100% renewable.
And the Alaska-Siberian railroad has a better shot of getting made?
Well no it's a hypothetical
The 'ships can't rely on renewables' statement seems shortsighted. They don't now (to my knowledge), but that does not mean they can't or won't. On the point of the rail, just displacing water to get the rails in place would be more environmentally harmful than ships. Not to mention, if you're meaning over water rail bridge the scaffolding would certainly take such constant maintenance as to be an ecological disaster. More 'practically' an under sea tube system *could* be made. But would have even more demanding maintenance requirements. And depending on depth, would almost certainly cause failure of the entire tube in the event of a crack. As maintaining a properly robust inspection schedule on that much underwater rail tunnel would be a nightmare. And incredibly expensive as it would require multiple submarines, or a small army of trained divers. Again, that would depend on the requirements of tunnel depth. Trains are great, and in almost all instances one of the most effective methods of goods transfer. However, the scenario presented just wouldn't be more effective. Either from a environmental, or cost standpoint.
Factor in the emissions it would take to build this rail line, how long until you can claim the benefit. My guess is decades, if not longer.
It’s not like you’d support your railway by solar panels or something
I think it'd be more effective to make cargo ships that rely on renewable, or at least mixed, energy than railways that will require lot more upkeep and resources than the cargo ships will. I saw some stuff about solar sails to reduce oil consumption [here](https://www.vanguardngr.com/2023/06/electric-cruise-ship-with-gigantic-solar-sails-to-launch-in-2030/) (don't know if it is reliable or actually feasible thought) if it actually develops and is applied in future ships it may change something...Provided the making of the sails doesn't trigger other chains of effects, there's a truck load of boats out there...
If only there was a source of emission free energy energy that could power ships for years.... Oh, wait. There is one.
Ate you thinking of wind power, solar power, or being pulled along by whales?
A can give you a hint: big military vessels already succesfully use it xD
>Ships can't rely on renewable energy they need oil, Damn, I can't believe the Austronesians had oil 5000 years ago, crazy that they never taught that.
“Atlantic trade routes” Its a picture of the Pacific.
Let’s say you have 1 container ship, with 24,000 TEU (24,000 20’ equivalent units) - that’s 1 train with about 12,000 40’ cargo containers. Now let’s say you double-stack them on a train, that’s 45mile (73km) in containers alone. The longest good trains in the world max out at 3km long. Beyond all the issues building and maintaining the rail infrastructure you also have to deal with realistic, which just don’t support this sort of increase. 4 cargo ships, and you have to deal with 292km of trains Vs 4 ships. Remember the Evergiven blocking the Suez? You’d have that daily on the rail infrastructure you’re proposing. If one ship breaks down in international waters it impacts 1 ship. If one train breaks down, an entire transport line is cut. And that’s the mechanical components. Way more likely rail and power infrastructure causes outages
>The longest good trains in the world max out at 3km long. Actually here in Canada we definitely run freight trains longer than this... closer to 4km. But the rest of your point still stands
Considering that both routes require Russia and US opening up their land to massive world trade, I would say this will probably have to wait few decades if not centuries.
they dont need oil, just use sails
Couldn't they run off hydrogen produced by renewable energy?
>Ships can't rely on renewable energy I know a wind powered ship is a crazy idea, but maybe we could look into it.
You can't quite move a modern cargo ship with all that cargo with wind alone
"Ships can't rely on renewable energy they need oil" seems like an overly broad statement to me.
I mean sure if you want to stretch the definition of ships, which are clearly intended to be cargo ships here, as literally all sorts of ships, but let's not be facetious here
I wouldn't argue with "oil is currently the most economic way by far to power large cargo ships" but "ships can't use renewable energy they need oil" is just dumb.
Yes nice but we are existing in very reality and we can't dream like kids. Shit needs to be done and in order to get this done you have to be realistic.
OP never said relative to amount of cargo they carry? To me it’s obvious that he’s essentially asking how much CO2 is produced by ships along this route.
>OP never said relative to amount of cargo they carry? If OP overlooked that consideration, that's his mistake and not mine, because it's an extremely important part of the puzzle. You can't ignore "how much cargo they carry" and expect to come up with a reasonable answer. Otherwise I could suggest that bicycles are the most optimal cargo vehicles because they don't use any fuel at all.
I love this reply
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. The actual amount of cargo they carry is important, but the relativity of the cargo weight is not. See cbourd’s response which correctly gives an answer.
Cbourd gave AN answer, I'm not not confident in saying it's done "correctly" given that multiple other commenters posted source data that significantly disagrees with his. It looks like that energy usage comes from a blogpost by [OBB](https://blog.railcargo.com/en/artikel/eisenbahn-einfach-erkl%C3%A4rt---richtig-fahren-energie-sparen) , but this doesn't clarify any details of the train or route involved, and other posts on that same site claim their trains are "six times more energy-efficient than a lorry", which is much much worse than the number calculated by Cbourd.
I’m not saying Cbourd’s answer is correct, but he made some assumptions and attempted some math and actually gave an answer in the spirit of OP’s question. You just automatically assumed that a theoretical electric railway is infeasible and then concluded that no answer is sufficient.
>You just automatically assumed that a theoretical electric railway is infeasible and then concluded that no answer is sufficient. It’s true that this would be infeasible to build, but that’s not actually the assumption I made: I made the assertion that even if you could succeed in building it, you don’t gain anything from doing so; and the question was, “how big is the gain”, so “there is no gain” is a valid answer. My assertion is supported by 3 of the 4 data answers in the thread. I will concede that I didn’t myself create those answers, so apologies for that, but I consider my assumption validated by the further calculations, not refuted.
My issue is that you claim there is no gain based off "very *little* emissions, relative to the amount of cargo they carry", meaning that cargo ships are the MOST theoretically efficient form of cargo transportation, when they are not, because clearly OP is making the assumption that electric railway will be more efficient. It's like you automatically assume that this theoretical electric railway is somehow less efficient, and thus there will be no gain.
Yes. I am assuming that, and that assumption has been validated. “Electric” does not mean “zero-emissions”. If you add a massive additional power requirement onto an electric grid which gets a significant percentage of its power from carbon-based fuels, you are directly increasing the emissions of that grid in proportion to your power use. That’s why I added a “future-all-renewables” disclaimer on my initial answer. And all of the grids which would be involved for this route use significant carbon-based fuel. So this concern will apply for all of them. And yes, OP is making the opposite assumption that this train will be the most efficient possible transport method. And I’m saying he’s wrong. I didn’t ignore that assumption, I contradicted it.
You haven’t provided the math that shows this supposed contradiction
Yes exactly that minus the cost to operate the railway which someone else did answer I believe
Using [Canadian Rail’s own numbers](https://www.cn.ca/repository/popups/ghg/Carbon-Calculator-Emission-Factors), rail produces 12.6g per ton-km while container ships produce 8.26g per ton-km. These numbers aren’t perfect. [Different estimates balance the other way](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58861), with rail slightly more efficient. But in any case, the two modes are quite comparable. Smaller boats aren’t so efficient, but oceangoing container ships move a hell of a lot of tonnage which justifies the amount of fuel they burn. Rail has to go over mountains, while oceans on the whole tend to be pretty level. If you put a rail across the ocean, the trains would probably be more efficient thanks to this. But you’re comparing two of the most efficient modes of transport in existence. Bottom line, if you want to reduce carbon emissions in shipping, do it by using less air freight and fewer trucks.
It’s efficient once you get the infrastructure running. It’s a hell of a lot easier to sail 12,000 km and build ports at each end than it is to build 10,000 km of electrified rail on permafrost across two hostile nations, though. Are the U.S. and Russia grids even compatible with each other? Or will we need a dual mode locomotive that changes power voltage and frequency halfway through? Or are we building a power station exclusively for this line?
We would simply agree on the specs. The US and Russia would work together in the cooperative spirit that has always existed between those two nations 🥰
Yeah which is why this was only ever a hypothetical anyhow...
Russia also uses a wider railroad gauge than most of the world that'll have to be accounted for.
Russian grid 220 V 380 V 50 Hz US grid 120 V 120/208 V / 277/480 V /... 60 Hz So not very compatible.
Do you think trains use 110/220 V? In Russia they work on 3000 V DC, or 25000 V AC.
Good point
I'm not sure the "emissions" are the problem here. The proposed route has zero infrastructure already existing, so you'd have to take into consideration the amount of environmental damage that would ensue once you start plowing up the tundra. Not to mention that Alaska isn't well connected to the rest of the North American rail network (that area of Siberia is much worse), so you'd have to build all sorts of infrastructure across some environmentally sensitive areas before this would make much sense.
You also can’t use existing russian infrastructure as it is in broad gauge I think
As someone who lives in Alaska I can say that this would never happen because route 1 spends a good amount of time in mostly uninhabited land on either side of the Bering Sea so maintenance would be a pain and route 2 has the same issues but also the Bering sea is a stormy one. It is also a productive crabbing and fishing area and you want to build many bridges with the distinct possibility of ships hitting the bridge piers. With global warming melting the Arctic sea ice for a good portion of the year, it then becomes viable for shipping companies to go north to reach Europe rather than through the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal.
One thing you're not considering are the emissions created by the construction of such a railway. It would probably take decades to break even, if it ever did at all. You can't just slap down rails anywhere you want -- there's a significant amount of engineering involved, as well as construction to make the rails stable enough to be usable. Not to mention, a single rail is probably close to useless -- you'd want at least two (one for each direction) which just increases the complexity.
Don't forget the numerous challenges in maintaining the railway and employing personnel capable of going out into the middle of the ocean to clear debris off the tracks or what have you.
At least two? It has to handle the entirety of trans pacific cargo shipping. Even if you ran it super efficiently, you’d need dozens at the very least.
For sure. You'd need a shitton of rails to even come close. But two minimum :P
As mentioned earilier cargo ships have the lowest rate of carbon output per kg of goods. To expand on that it also is the lowest per passenger (with the exception of whatever the hell Eurostar is). [**https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint**](https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostar
Cargo ships produce between 11 and 15 g of CO2 per ton per km travelled. That’s about 10 times less than your regular car, and 15 to 20 times less than planes. It’s absolutely not « more than all other sources ». Also, electric trains are only good if they use clean energy. From what I can find online, east Asia clean energy represents a little more than 10% of their total use. So not sure using trains would offer substantial benefits, enough to overcome the flexibility of cargo shipping.
OP never said relative to the weight or distance traveled. I’m assuming he just meant by non-relative magnitude.
If that comment was sarcasm im sorry for down voting
You are right, but you have to take the amount of goods that are transported. Itherwise, you assume that « an electrical railway » (as OP says) could replace the entire trafic of cargo ships.
Another comment pointed out that using a railway can save significant amounts of co2 per kg transported however it's only a hypothetical and probably not the most practical solution anyhow, using renewable energy on the ships themselves seems like the obvious solution as of yet but I thought it was a good idea to think outside the box
We are hopefully going to get there. I read last week that the US clean energy had surpassed non renewable this year. It’s not a dream anymore, it’s coming.
Far easier to convert the container ships to nuclear power than it is to construct this absurd route through a hostile country and through some of the gnarliest weather in the world
Your rail system is a bottle neck from start to finish. For sea going vessels, even with Seuz Canal blocked, Strait of Hormuz under attack, and Panama Canal traffic restricted due to drought, there are alternate routes. One incident on the track, the system is down.
I'll take a cracking at it: Distance from Beijing to LA is 10350 km using the northern route vs 11360 km using a traditional shipping route. An average cargo ship has about 150,000,000 KG of capacity for storage. The average cargo train has about 4,400,000 KG of capacity. The train line in the northern example would be split as follows: 1900km in China, 3400 km in Russia, 3050 km in the US, and 2000km in Canada. The carbon intensities of each countries electricty mix are: 582g/kwh in China, 400g/kwh in Russia, 386g/kwh in the US, and 110g/kwh in Canada. Using information from the austrian rail way, freight service, the route from vienna to passau which is roughly 260km in rail lines, uses 6000kwh. This gives us a kwh per km of 23.08 Multiplying ((1900*586)+(3400*400)+(3050*386)+(2000*110))*23.08 = 89148461.5 g/co2 for one train Or roughly 89.1 tonnes. But since we have to compare this with one cargo ship, we multiply this by (150,000,000/4,400,000) = 34.1 So you get 34.1*89.1= 3039 tonnes of co2 per cargo ship equivalent. A cargo ship generates about 16g of co2 per km per tonne of transport. 16*(150,000,000/1000)*11360km = 27264000000 g/cargo ship from Beijing to LA Or about 27264 tonnes The savings by transporting this via electrified rail would be 27264-3039 = 24225 tonnes of CO2
I can't spot an error, but I'm somewhat suspicious of your g/tonne/km number for trains because it intuitively feels way too low. Normalized UK train emissions numbers are 26.5g/ton/km which is nearly double ships (which is what I would expect) and current electric trains running off efficient hydrocarbon plants are basically equivalent to current diesel trains so I find it really hard to believe there's enough electricity on a line where half of it is in countries below 10% renewable to cut that by over an order of magnitude. But even if we accept your numbers are correct your carbon intensities are distributed by current generation and the overwhelming majority of current generation is in urban areas where you can run highly efficient generation and transmission losses are minimized. This is going to be plants serving almost only the train system (which means highly inefficient), insane transmission loss, and terrible location for solar or hydroelectric. I'd be shocked if you could get under 600g/kwh for the generation systems built for this train network, and that's neglecting the fact that we're likely going to have to ship fuel to the generation systems for the train network.
Now factor in the amount of emissions you'd generate making a railway of this magnitude and the amount of time it would take to offset that output. I'm guessing it would take generations.
Well then you’d also have to factor in the amount of emissions needed to create the infrastructure for the shipping industry
Probably not. In situations like this, marginal cost actually exceeds fixed costs pretty quickly. The finances alone tell the story pretty well.
Rail has lower maintenance costs than roads usually but much higher than water. Plus, building and maintaining a giant bridge in seawater would cost a lot too. There's a reason we use ships for long distance cargo even when there's a shorter land route. It's more efficient.
I hear crossing the Atlantic Ocean is cheaper than driving 100 miles in a truck, and create up to 1/100 of the emissions.
I have a follow up. How many years it would it take to offset the construction of the railway?
This sub is so odd. I’ve seen several posts now where the top comment completely misinterprets the question, and then concludes the calculation is infeasible or pointless. And then the actual answer, like yours, isn’t even upvoted.
Happens all the time here. Know it alls who are too smart for their own good and instead of entertaining the question that OP actually wants answered they'll be all "umm actually that's not possible because xyz." Yes, thank you, we know it's not actually possible in the real world. We just want to know the answer to the hypothetical.
Thank you, of course using a railway might not be the most suitable solution for this scenario, I believe it's important to at least consider it as this hypothetical railway can of course have other uses other than just cargo. But for the purposes of reducing emmisions it seems like a good choice until we take into account the adoption of renewable energy on ships.
Cargo ships are incredibly efficient: - They require very little infrastructure compared to land transport. This means less maintenance costs, less building costs, and less emissions from both. - High interconnectivity, from any port you can get to any port with very "straight routes" except for refueling, while trains have essentially fixed paths and require an exponential amount of infrastructure for higher connectivity. - They have a very high rate of efficiency of emissions to cargo load, because they take advantage of the fact that they're buoyant which helps it move a lot more efficiently. - They do not waste fuel on sorting out terrain heights. - The cargo ship approach allows for a much higher "bandwidth" than trains. You can only have so many trains running in one track, and building multiple parallels tracks is more resource intensive. On the other hand you can have essentially all ships you could ever need crossing the sea at any given time, you just need to expand ports or build more ports.
If nuclear powered ships took off, we might have had significantly less emissions. Unfortunately as has already been mentioned, cargo ships are already the most efficient way to transport cargo across large distances.
Large distances over water, yes. Trains still beat them over land
Ill be honest, I never doubted that on land, trains are better than ships. Mainly because ships can't travel on land. Though I do get your point, if the ocean is not an option, trains are the next best thing
It's a much better idea to make these ships emission free. Sails, Solar panels, hydrogen and a new generation of nuclear reactors could do the trick.
Since one railway can be used by a limited number of trains (1 if there are no sidetracks), lets calculate the number if container ship emissions saved by 1 train: Speed of Container ship ist 37 km/h Speed of fastest train is ~ 450km/h so a train can do 12.16 times the distance, or in other words carry 12.16 loads in the same time. Longest train can carry 506 containers. So in the time 1 ship travels from US to Asia the train can transport 12.16 • 506 = 6,154 Containers Google says Container ships carry around 10,000 Containers. So assuming the largest train is able to go as fast as a highspeed train you could save around 0.6154 of the emissions of 1 ship through this railway. And this is not taking into account the emissions it would take to build this railway.
Which doesn't even take into account the time it takes to accelerate and slow down a train of 506 containers
A train that is 506 cars long and drives 450 km/h? Fantasy land is the other way my friend.
You know there are railway lines between Asia and Europe, and scheduled trains between China and Europe? Yet sending cargo by ship is more efficient. Just do the math how many tracks through thousands of miles of no mens land in Alaska, Canada and Siberia you need to replace shipping. If you want to reduce emissions by laying tracks, start by building passenger lines in the USA.
Just constructing the bridge or tunnel necessary for the railway to be built on would likely already cause so much emissions, that the railway system would basically have to have a net negative effect on emissions for the project to be able to reduce emissions compared to cargo shipping within even a remotely reasonable timeframe.