Hauling freight trains with electric locomotives is now starting to happen
CN tests battery-electric locomotive, while CP and Southern Railway of B.C. look to hydrogen
Emily Chung · CBC News · Posted:
May 05, 2022 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 2 hours ago
Canada's railway giants, CN and CP, are testing battery and hydrogen locomotives in a move toward electric, zero-emissions freight rail. At least one smaller railway, Southern Railway of B.C., is working on hydrogen locomotive technology too. Here's a look at why they're electrifying and the technologies they're testing.
Why the industry is
moving toward electric
Though the
transportation sector is the second-biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions
after oil and gas, the Railway Association of Canada says rail generates
only 3.5 per cent of transportation emissions.
Still, said Josipa
Petrunic, president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and
Innovation Consortium, given Canada's ambitious greenhouse gas emissions
targets, even those need to be eliminated. Rail companies are now facing
pressure from both governments and shareholders to reduce emissions, she said,
especially now that the price on carbon is expected to ratchet up over time —
and, with it, the price of diesel that powers Canadian trains.
"They know
they've got to cut this cost before it starts hitting their bottom line,"
said Petrunic, who co-authored a 2020 report on rail innovation in Canada.
Gord Lovegrove,
associate professor of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia
Okanagan, agreed that there is increased shareholder pressure on railways to
address climate change.
"And that's
why [electrification] is happening in advance of any federal regulation,"
he said.
But he noted that diesel-burning trains also generate a lot of other pollutants that are bad for human health. These include nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter, as well as sulphur dioxide linked to acid rain.
In urban areas, these pollutants and the noise generated by locomotives can be a huge nuisance near switching yards, which is where rail cars are stored, loaded, unloaded and hitched together. The small switcher locomotives that move cars around in those rail yards represent just a fraction of Canada's locomotive fleet, Lovegrove said, but can generate double or triple the emissions of a long-haul locomotive engine.
The B.C. government
has started to charge fines for older, more polluting locomotives, he said. But
it has promised to return the last three years of fines back to Southern
Railway of B.C., if it retrofits its locomotives to include zero-emission
technology.
"So not only
are they realizing reduced fuel costs, reduced public complaints [but] they're
getting money back to fund their business case," Lovegrove said.
In the longer term,
given climate and pollution concerns, he said, rail companies need to electrify
"because diesel is going to be regulated out of existence."
CN's battery
electric locomotive project
CN Rail,
headquartered in Montreal, announced in November that it had
purchased a Wabtec FLXdrive battery-electric heavy-haul freight
locomotive. The company has set a target of
reducing its greenhouse gas emission intensity by 29 per cent by 2030 compared
to 2015 — and achieving net zero by 2050.
Janet Drysdale, CN
Rail's vice-president of sustainability, said 85 per cent of the company's
emissions are produced by its diesel-powered locomotives.
"So solving
this locomotive issue is really critical for us."
The plan is to test
it on a small, isolated piece of track near Wabtec's headquarters in Erie,
Penn. The company has received funding from that state for the pilot.
This particular locomotive was tested in California in 2021. But Drysdale said because CN operates in Canada, one of the things that needs to be tested is how the battery is affected by cold.
Battery-electric locomotives have been tested in train yards, but the CN/Wabtec pilot will also do tests pulling freight on the main line.
CN said the
electric locomotive, which will operate along with up to six other locomotives,
could reduce emissions by up to 30 per cent on routes where the topography
allows it to partially recharge the battery with regenerative braking.
Regenerative braking recovers some of the energy used to slow down the
vehicle and turns it into electricity.
In the future, Gina
Trombley, executive vice-president and chief commercial officer for Wabtec,
said the companies expect most of the recharging to happen via overhead
catenary wires and pantographs, similar to those used by streetcars, during
low-speed loading at locations such as grain terminals.
"In order to fully operationalize fully electric locomotives, you're going to have to find a way to charge on the move," she added.
Trombley said the CN project is still at the design stage, but the two companies think they'll have the locomotive running in the second half of 2023.
CP and Southern
Railway of B.C.'s hydrogen locomotive projects
Calgary-based
Canadian Pacific announced in December 2020 that it
planned to develop North America's first hydrogen-powered line-haul freight
locomotive. Nearly a year later, it said it was expanding the program from one
to three locomotives after receiving a $15-million grant from the Alberta
government. The fuel cells for the first locomotive were delivered by
Vancouver-based Ballard Power Systems in January. Structures and logistics
company ATCO Group announced this week that it had reached a deal to build two hydrogen production and
refuelling stations, one in each of CP's rail yards in Calgary and
Edmonton.
CP declined to be
interviewed for this article, but in an interview on Ballard's website posted in
September, Kyle Mulligan, chief engineer at CP, said initial
trials are expected to run between Calgary and Lethbridge.
Kate Charlton,
vice-president of investor relations at Ballard, said the company's fuel cells
are already running passenger trams in China and being tested for passenger
rail with Siemens in Germany. But ones required to haul freight are roughly double
the size.
However, she said
the fuel cells are similar in size to the diesel engine currently used to power
the train's electric powertrain.
"So they
basically pull the diesel engine out and replace it with a fuel cell,"
Charlton said.
She added that fuelling
times should be similar.
Mulligan told
Ballard that CP plans to roll out hydrogen fuelling infrastructure
"coinciding with our existing diesel fuelling operation locations."
Charlton, who works closely with CP, said the company expects the hydrogen locomotives to be running in 2023.
Meanwhile, New
Westminster-based Southern Railway of B.C., a short line railway, announced last year that it was
converting one of its switcher locomotives from diesel-electric to
hydrogen-electric, in partnership with fuel cell maker Loop Energy and hydrogen
storage firm Hydrogen in Motion. The locomotive has been dubbed the "Green
Goat." Lovegrove and his group are involved in the research and
development for that project.
Lovegrove said the
fuel cells and batteries are coming this summer and fall, and the system will
be tested over the next year or two.
Why are they
testing different technologies? Is there one that's likely to dominate?
There are
operational reasons why CP and CN think their projects make sense. For example,
CN says it has an ideal testing ground near Wabtec's headquarters in
Pennsylvania, and that state is providing some financial support.
CP's Mulligan said
that the company chose hydrogen because "battery electric requires
recharging that can take time that — from our current operation, which is
diesel powered — we don't necessarily have a provision for," according to
the Ballard interview.
However, it can roll out hydrogen fuelling at its Ogden solar farm, and there are natural gas refineries in the Edmonton area that can produce hydrogen.
Drysdale said there are only a small group of railways and suppliers in the industry. "So what we want to avoid is us all testing the same things, right?"
Across North
America, different rail companies are testing different technologies for
different applications and in different local conditions.
"All of this
work ultimately is going to benefit all of us," Drysdale said.
Lovegrove said
batteries "will be a constant throughout" — whether they're charged
by hydrogen fuel cells or some other method.
However, he thinks
hydrogen will be a key technology when hauling heavy loads over long distances.
Petrunic said she expects there to be a mix of
battery-electric and hydrogen-electric locomotives.
"There's going
to be those switch yard locomotives and several regional rail routes that may
make sense mostly with battery alone," she said, "and then others
where hydrogen is going to have to be the solution because [of] not only the
range, but the availability of fuel."
She called both
CN's and CP's projects "baby steps in the right direction."
"But,"
she added, "these baby steps are going to basically end there unless there
is a very significant effort to build out both the electrical capacity across
the country for this, as well as the hydrogen supply chain."
There are a number of interesting points in this article: 1) it is a positive development. 2) it shows the effects of new regulation and legislation is starting to have. 3) It mentions CN's targetsto reduce GHGs by 29% by 2030 and net zero by 2050. These are contained in CNs Climate Action Plan, with a link at the bottom of the article.
ReplyDeleteA progressive step in eliminating Fossil fuels in our transportation system.
ReplyDeleteNothing is ever as simple as it approves at first blush is it?
ReplyDelete