High-speed rail isn't an effective way to stop global warming - Washington Post (blog)

When last we checked up on California’s plans to build a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles, things looked grim. Costs had geysered upward and legislators were nervous. So then Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration revised its bullet-train plan, whittling the price tag down to $68 billion.

An artist’s rendition of a gizmo that, while nifty, is not the best way to reduce carbon emissions. (Anonymous/AP) But even this newer, sleeker plan is facing difficulties. And part of the problem has to do with climate change. See, the state has just $10 billion in voter-approved bonds at its disposal to build the rail system. The Obama administration, for its part, chipped in $2.7 billion in high-speed rail money from the stimulus bill. But that still leaves California $55 billion short. And Republicans in Congress are hardly eager to send more train money to California.

So as a backup plan, Brown’s administration wants to use money raised by California’s new climate law. Under the state’s cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, power plants and factories will have to buy permits to pollute. And Brown has suggested diverting this money into high-speed rail. But there are two problems. For one, this might be illegal, as the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office concluded on Tuesday. Second, and more broadly, high-speed rail turns out not to be a very effective use of money that’s meant to combat global warming.

Paul Druce at Reason & Rail offered up a few numbers on this topic last year. The California High Speed Rail Authority claims that by 2030, if the train ran entirely on renewable energy, then it would reduce the state’s carbon emissions by about 5.4 million metric tons a year. That means that if you ignore all the carbon emissions used to build the system, the rail network would reduce emissions at a cost of $12,506 per metric ton of carbon dioxide.

That’s quite expensive. To put this in perspective, research has suggested that you could plant 100 million acres of trees and reforest the United States for a cost of about $21 to $91 per ton of carbon dioxide. Alternatively, a study by Dan Kammen of UC Berkeley found that it would cost somewhere between $59 and $87 per ton of carbon dioxide to phase out coal power in the Western United States and replace it with solar, wind and geothermal. If reducing greenhouse gases is the goal, then there are much cheaper and more cost-effective ways to do it than building a bullet train.

Now, this doesn’t mean high-speed passenger rail is a bad idea. There are all sorts of other reasons why California might want a rail system: Perhaps it will boost economic development in cities along the path, or offer people more convenient transportation options, or allow the state to build fewer roads. But it’s harder to justify using scarce climate funds for a shiny new high-speed rail system on the grounds that it’s the most effective way for California to curb its carbon emissions.