Fact check: Is High-Speed Rail as “green” as advocates aver?
Image by Wikimedia Commons
Marc Joffe takes to the OC Register to dispel claims that California's High-Speed Rail will reduce CO2 emissions, showing instead—employing HSR Authority's latest ridership and emissions savings projections—that HSR is decidedly incapable of making even the slightest dent in climate crises.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s new draft business plan shows a further reduction in projected ridership, reinforcing questions about the project’s value as a climate change solution.
When thinking about the climate change claims our political leaders make, it is important to recognize that California is currently responsible for about 0.75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, no California-specific policy can “solve” climate change. Any savings the state achieves from its many initiatives will likely be offset by growth in China’s world-leading greenhouse gas emissions.
Given California’s minor contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, state government’s focus on climate policy seems excessive. One could argue that California climate policy should serve as a template for other state, provincial and national governments. To the extent that others follow California’s lead, the impact of our policies could be multiplied. But that is very unlikely to be the case with high-speed rail, since few other political units could or would spend $128 billion on a single megaproject.
Assuming High-Speed Rail Phase I from San Francisco to Anaheim is completed by 2040, the Authority expects that it will carry 28.4 million passengers that year. This estimate is down from 38.6 million in 2022 and 31.3 million in 2023, reflecting sharply lower expectations for California’s population growth in the wake of the COVID-19 outmigration.
Fewer high-speed rail passengers means the project will replace fewer automobile and airplane trips than previously expected. The latest draft business plan estimates that annual greenhouse gas emissions savings from these avoided trips will total 0.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents (MMTCO2E) in 2040 and a similar amount in 2050.
These annual emission savings are dwarfed by the 338 MMTCO2E of greenhouse gas emissions generated statewide in 2021. If the full high-speed rail phase I could somehow be implemented today, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide by less than 0.2%.
This article originally appeared in the Orange County Register. Read the whole thing here.
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