Hydrogen-powered trains may be the green alternative North American railways need
Also this week: Microsoft powers its large campus with geothermal energy and Daniel Kahneman's observations on human foibles in decision-making.
Is the end of the line approaching for diesel locomotives?
North American long-distance trains soon may be powered by clean hydrogen, replacing the diesel locomotives that for decades have been doing the heavy work of moving commodities and other goods across vast transcontinental distances.
The Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway company (CPKC) is currently testing a hydrogen locomotive designed by its own engineers with support from Ballard Power Systems of British Columbia. Meanwhile in California, the Department of Transportation (Caltrans) recently signed an order with Swiss manufacturer Stadler for delivery of hydrogen-powered passenger trains for new intercity lines.
Hydrogen-powered vehicles offer an environment-friendly alternative to fossil-based diesel fuel, with practically no emissions.
CPKC began experimenting with hydrogen in 2020 when engineers retrofitted a traditional diesel-electric locomotive. They installed hydrogen fuel cells and battery technology to run the locomotive’s traction motors. This proved promising and by the end of 2023 two more locomotives had been converted. Over the last two years, the railway firm increased its order of fuel cell engines from Ballard Power Systems to twenty. Testing is now progressing on the most challenging terrain for heavily-loaded, long freight trains: the steep grades of the Rocky Mountains where high power output is essential.
CPKC operates the largest railway network in North America. Its lines cover a distance of 32,000 kilometres and connect Canada, the United States and Mexico. (CPKC is a relatively new corporate entity, formed last spring by the merger of two large companies: Canadian Pacific Railways and Kansas City Southern.)
In Europe battery-electric trains are preferred by most carriers. Very few routes operate outside the established network of overhead electrical wires and battery charging stations. Even for those lines that are separate from the network, trains are seldom further than 80 kilometres away from a battery charge. In North America, however, electric railway infrastructure is minimal, and distances between hubs are great, so hydrogen offers a promising solution to wean the industry off fossil fuels.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in nature. It’s a fundamental building block of the universe, found in about 75% of all matter. As a fuel source, hydrogen can even be separated from seawater. It is colourless, odourless and non-toxic, but also highly combustible.
Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity through a chemical reaction between two electrodes. When electrical energy is generated by these cells, the only by-product is water, making this technology particularly appealing for green-energy development. “I can’t think of anything that would be more important than being able to create a locomotive that only outputs water as the exhaust,” CPKC head engineer Kyle Mulligan told Trains magazine.
If testing continues to advance well, over the next few years CPKC plans to ramp up the operation of its hydrogen locomotives. For long-range operations the company also intends to add tenders. These are special railway cars attached to the locomotive with additional stores of hydrogen fuel.
In California, meanwhile, Caltrans hopes to be operating its passenger trains by 2027.
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(The sources for this post are listed at the end of the newsletter.)
Microsoft’s underground energy source for its leading-edge campus
After a four-year construction project, the modernization of the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, is nearing completion. The redevelopment includes many green projects, but one in particular stands out for its ambition and scope. The Geothermal Energy Center is designed to provide heating and cooling for the 72-acre campus. Here’s how one writer describes it:
To heat and cool the massive campus, a 6.5-acre geothermal well field, consisting of around 900 boreholes drilled up to 550 feet deep was completed last year with the aim of delivering 50% of the heating and cooling needs without carbon emissions.
The closed-loop geothermal heating and cooling system sends either cool or warm water to exchange energy with the deep earth, and the refrigeration is so powerful that it could cool 3,000 homes in the summertime.
-Andy Corbley in an article distributed by the Good News Network
Large water tanks contain hot and cold water that is exchanged in the piping underground. The heat exchanger that does this work requires electricity to run, and that is provided by renewable energy, resulting in zero emissions.
To read about this and some of the other energy-saving innovations at the Microsoft campus, here’s the link:
Things Daniel Kahneman taught us about decision-making
I’m reflecting today on the passing of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist known for his groundbreaking work in the field of behavioural economics. He died last week at the age of 90.
Kahneman left us with lots to think about. Indeed, his work was all about the idiosyncrasies of human nature entwined in the process of thinking. One of his most popular works was the bestselling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
With his long-time collaborator, Amos Tversky, Kahneman took a particular interest in understanding decision-making. Kahneman and Tversky were fascinated with how people selected certain choices, like how they picked stocks to own, and when they sold them, how they chose their car, how they decided where to apply for work, etc.
They showed how our everyday decision-making is heavily influenced by subconscious biases. The Guardian newspaper aptly summarized their work this way:
The pair’s research focused on how much decision-making is shaped by subterranean quirks and mental shortcuts that can distort our thoughts in irrational yet predictable ways.
“Quirks and mental shortcuts”. We all have them; we all take them. Even when we are trained in things like decision analysis. It’s remarkable how our intuitive or perceptual tendencies override deliberate, methodical thinking.
Strategy + Business, a publication by Pricewaterhouse Coopers International (PwC), recently reposted an interview with Kahneman focused on some of his research at the intersection of psychology, economics and corporate leadership.
Here’s one statement from the interview that resonated with me:
Fear distorts the perception of risk and introduces error into decision-making capacity.
Consider how often fear influences decisions we’ve made. Consider our choices during the pandemic, or how we respond when we’re bidding on something (FOMO), our decisions as parents, and so on.
Kahneman makes the case that, broadly speaking, two systems of thinking can be employed when making a decision: the first is intuitive, quick and perceptual; the second is deliberate, slow and methodical. The second system requires real effort of concentration and impartiality. There are moments when it’s valuable to use one system or the other or a combination of both, depending on the choice one is wrestling with. In most cases, there’s an element of risk and probability that must be accepted, with the underlying biases about how we perceive risk.
In the Strategy + Business interview, Kahneman indicated the need to recognize that many decisions are still gambles.
The rational model is one in which the beliefs and the desires are supposed to be determined. We were real believers in decision analysis 30 years ago, and now we must admit that decision analysis hasn’t held up.
I think decision makers, in business and elsewhere, just reject the metaphor altogether. Managers think of themselves as captains of a ship on a stormy sea. Risk for them is danger, but they are fighting it, very controlled. The idea that you are gambling is an admission that at a certain point you have lost control, and you have no control beyond a certain point. This is abhorrent to decision managers; they reject that. And that’s why they reject decision analysis.
That’s why you ought to think of systems. There are ways of thinking about a problem that are better than others.
And here’s what he said about the reluctance of companies to evaluate their decisions even at the cost of repeating mistakes:
The thing that astonishes me when I talk to business people in the context of decision analysis is that you have an organization that’s making lots of decisions and they’re not keeping track. They’re not trying to learn from their own mistakes; they’re not investing the smallest amount in trying to actually figure out what they’ve done wrong. And that’s not an accident: They don’t want to know.
So there is a lot of curiosity, and I get invited to give lots of talks. But the idea that you might want to appoint somebody to keep statistics on the decisions that you made and a few years later evaluate the biases, the errors, the forecasts that were wrong, the factors that were misjudged, in order to make the process more rational — they won’t want to do it.
Those of you employed in large companies may have an opinion about this. Daniel Kahneman’s research and writings were both deep and wide-ranging.
If you’d like to read the Strategy+Business interview I’ve cited, it’s available here.
Kahneman lived a colourful life. His obituary is here.
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Thanks for reading Zanepost.
My sketch this week is of “The Missenden Flyer. ” That’s the name of a motorcycle enthusiast in the U.K. who operates one of the most popular YouTube channels of the same name. Andy, as he is known offline (he keeps his surname private), is also a civil aviation pilot. He has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and his videos are seen by millions. I’m a regular follower.
If you’re interested in sampling Andy’s work, you can find him here.
See you next time,
-Renato.
Sources for the hydrogen locomotive post:
https://www.railjournal.com/regions/north-america/cpkc-trials-use-of-hydrogen-tender/
Thank you for another well thought out post, Renato which gives me much to think about, perhaps even slowly. Thank you for the tribute in memory of Daniel Kahneman.