Rail Freight Is Higher Carbon Than Electric Trucking In North America
Not in the rest of the world, but decarbonizing logistics will mean more electric trucks in the US, Canada and Mexico
In 2010, I was consulting to Canadian National Railroad, at the time with the legendary Hunter Harrison as CEO. It was one of many times my decarbonization proposals bounced off of organizations, something that’s been inordinately useful in helping me understand how hardcore businesses view the space.
At the time, CNR and all railroads had a basic statement they trotted out to anyone who actually cared about carbon emissions: our carbon emissions are a lot lower than trucks. They couldn’t make that claim for pipelines, but as 99.999% of pipeline deliveries are of fossil fuels, no one really cared.
At the time CNR was running a lot of oil cars along its routes through 10 provinces and 18 US states, stringing up to 16 cars together with connecting hoses so that oil could be pumped in and out at one end. About 70,000 cars of oil a year have been running on North American tracks, and CNR and other railroads were promoting the business as an obvious alternative when pipelines weren’t available. That was in addition to the much higher numbers of coal cars they were running, about 4 million…