[HN Gopher] France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions
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France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions
Author : Turukawa
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-05-23 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| So now anything that was on a plane must now travel on the roads.
| It's not like the need to move from point A to B has been
| removed. Road travel has a much higher net impact on climate. How
| is this in any way good? The law of unintended consequences
| really applies here.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >So now anything that was on a plane must now travel on the
| roads.
|
| Tell me you know nothing about France without telling me you
| know nothing about France.
|
| Or Spain, for that matter. Or Germany. Or...
| palmer_fox wrote:
| Amazing that they missed the point that you are raising /s
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| https://parisbytrain.com/tgv-map/
|
| The purple lines are the high speed ones, and the (very few)
| yellow lines would be considered high speed in America.
|
| The system is a miracle.
| collyw wrote:
| Will it manage to handle the capacity of the air travel that
| is being removed?
| mahkeiro wrote:
| A TGV Duplex carries 510 passengers at 300km/h. For
| instance the TGV line going to south east France carries
| 75000 passengers per day with a theoretical capacity at
| 350000 passengers per day. I let you convert that into
| airplanes ;)
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Air France domestic backbone is home-grown a320s.
| Standard layout in their use of those is 174 pax.
|
| TGV Sud-Est is 350000 / 174 ~= 2012 flights per day.
|
| There's no airport in the world that handles traffic like
| that. ATL comes close at 1970 flights daily, but this
| 2012 is _only_ the capacity on TGV Sud-Est. This doesn 't
| count any of the _other_ lines, of which there are many:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TGV_services
|
| Trains are really intense.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| France's train network is pretty good if you're going
| towards or away from Paris.
|
| But if you're going from Brittany (in the NW) or Nantes
| to the SW (Toulouse or Bordeaux), driving is going to
| beat the train.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Very, very much yes. There's no mode with more capacity
| than trains.
| belorn wrote:
| Not only is train much better at handling large amount of
| capacity, it do so with a lower carbon footprint. Looking
| at the transportation sector in EU-27:
|
| _" Within the transport sector, aviation was responsible
| for 13.2 % of GHG emissions(144.3 megatonnes CO2 equivalent
| (Mt CO2e) and rail for 0.4 % (4.3 Mt CO2e). The latter
| refers to the emissions by diesel trains only. This
| compares with a share of 71.8 % for road transport and a
| share of 14.1 % for navigation (EC, 2020b)"_ (EEA Report No
| 19/2020)
|
| There is a good reason why trains are commonly used between
| mines and ports. A single train can have around 70-100 of
| cars, each loaded with 100 tons of Ore. To do the same with
| planes would be impossible expensive and the emissions
| would be insane.
|
| The only thing that can get near in terms of capacity and
| emissions are boats, although that sector is in large need
| of modernization. They discussed this in an other article
| about France, since they got several large rivers that
| could see increased utilization by the transportation
| sector.
|
| Obviously in both cases, transportation will take longer. I
| would assume that some delivery services will be exempted
| when a slower transportation is not suitable.
| rjmunro wrote:
| In France, people take fully electric high speed (150-200mph
| trains.
| beezlewax wrote:
| Spain also. Far nicer way to travel. Often faster when you
| account for travelling to and from the airport and air travel
| waiting times
| qbrass wrote:
| Wait until it results in longer flights that are still quicker
| than taking the roads or the train.
| fulafel wrote:
| Elevating news, there's hope yet for reining in air travel
| emissions by more realistic means than pie in the sky tech
| solutions.
| Bostonian wrote:
| Bans are inefficient and coercive. It would be better to tax
| fuels according to the emissions they produce.
| kffcc wrote:
| They ban relative to what trains can provide and since French
| electricity emits few co2 it's quite and interesting thing to
| do. I agree on wors of "ban"chosen though. It's more of a
| market correction, in regards to AirFrance and SNCF (trains)
| being both government supported.
| belorn wrote:
| A single trip between Paris and Nantes is calculated (using
| some random website) to be between 0.1-0.3 tons of Co2 per
| person on the plane.
|
| Using some other random website, the same trip for one person
| on train is calculated to be 2kg.
|
| So that makes it a factor of about 100x. How much could the
| tax be that would still make it distinguishable from a ban?
| How would people react if say the tax would be 1EUR per kg?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why not both, as the meme says. The regulation is good
| because it directs consumer spending into the sustainable
| rail program. The fuel tax would also be good for its own
| reasons.
| skitout wrote:
| "Bans are inefficient" , any source on this ?
|
| This is a real question. Bans "seems" to me as an efficient
| tool, but I have no source either...
| Bostonian wrote:
| Suppose you think the environmental cost of flying between
| two cities is 100 euros more than taking a train. Then if
| someone prefers to fly even with a 100 euro carbon tax on
| flying, it is inefficient to prohibit him or her from doing
| so.
| bsaul wrote:
| I would be curious to look at the raw numbers and how they were
| computed. France has been a net importer of electricity for a few
| years now, since we decided to shut down a few nuclear
| facilities. As a result we're importing a mix of electricity
| produced mainly by surrounding countries, like germany, where
| electricity is emitting far more CO2 than our local one (probably
| by a factor of 100x).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| 3-7x is a bit more realistic than x100, which would make
| basically zero difference to the comparison even if only
| imported electricity was used.
|
| _So pro-nuclear that I prefer airplanes to electric trains_ is
| a new and exciting angle on the climate discussion though.
| bsaul wrote:
| My recent observations with regard to green parties
| suggestion is that they're pointing at the wrong direction
| pretty much all the time.
|
| two recent case in point : they've been closing nuclear power
| plant in france and germany non stop, and as a consequence
| we're burning even more russian gaz than before, and since
| the war the horribly polluting gaz imported from the US.
|
| Second example : they've passed a law in france to force home
| owner to better insulate their housing, but the
| implementation details are so messed up that all they've
| managed to do is make renting even more impossible for
| students.
|
| So now, every time i see a law beeing passed under pressure
| of green parties, i look at where the horrible side effect is
| going to be this time.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| France has been closing nuclear power plants non-stop???
| Some reactors are EOL, the same is true for the USA and
| other countries since the nuclear power plant building boom
| was on the 70s and early 80s. However, France is still very
| pro nuclear power.
| kffcc wrote:
| If you are curios here is the real time French electricity data
| platform: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix
|
| and the German one: www.smard.de
|
| Not sure about yearly data but France seems to export lots of
| electricity right now. As you say, France has very low co2
| emission per kwh compared to Germany, that is due to the atomic
| electricity production.
|
| The ban is relative to "how long does it take to go there by
| train", I agree it's weird to compute that. Especially thinking
| about the potential of SNCF and AirFrance maybe considering
| their impact respectively. It's a good concern and we need to
| watch that.
| cvalka wrote:
| Taxation > regulation
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I'm generally pro pricing in externalities but this is a good
| example of using regulations to cut a Gordian knot of system
| interactions.
|
| Good advert for citizen climate assemblies.
| jbm wrote:
| I believe this but the ship has sailed.
|
| Taxation was the compromise, and it was not taken up in a
| serious way. Regulation is the next step. Now the onus is on
| other parts of the economy to realize that they need to handle
| externalities or they will be regulated too.
|
| I'm seeing a lot of this (failing to realize one is in a
| position where compromise is necessary); the idea that we have
| 50 years to spar affably over this is now going to come to an
| end.
|
| This a problem across the political spectrum.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| > same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half
| hours
|
| If the trains are on strike are you allowed to fly then?
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Except there wouldn't be any flights
| wcoenen wrote:
| Flights within the European Economic Area are already subject to
| the EU ETS[1], so banning certain flights may not have the
| intended effect of lowering emissions. It will just free up
| emission rights for other emitters.
|
| [1] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/eu-emissions-
| trading-...
| danielfoster wrote:
| Everyone seems to be missing the major point-- connecting flights
| are excluded. This measure is largely symbolic and will have no
| impact.
|
| On the other hand, it would be great to see airlines forced to
| accommodate passengers who miss flights due to delayed trains
| (and vice versa) as well as greater cooperation between rail and
| air carriers.
|
| Hopefully countries with poor rail infrastructure such as Germany
| do not adopt France's approach.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I don't think it's symbolic. A lot of point-to-point PDEW would
| take trains instead, which is a win.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > Hopefully countries with poor rail infrastructure such as
| Germany do not adopt France's approach.
|
| Germany does not have a poor rail infrastructure.
| chrisldgk wrote:
| Depends on how you define ,,poor rail infrastructure".
| Germany has a lot of routes and pretty much everything is
| well connected, but the state that the infrastructure is in
| with constant delays and badly maintained tracks is pretty
| bad.
| kazen44 wrote:
| don't forget that compared to france, germany has a far
| more distributed population density, This makes rails far
| harder to maintain.
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