China and hydrail: finders, keepers

In the last couple of weeks two news items made modest ripples on the Internet pond but probably didn't make newsprint anywhere in the U.S. or Canada -- both of which seriously needed to understand their portent.

The first appeared in China's English language People's Daily online. The second was a corporate press release by Bombardier Transport, a Berlin-based arm of the Canadian aerospace and transportation manufacturing colossus, Bombardier.

The news from China is that they have now joined the US, Japan and Taiwan--countries which have demonstrated and/or placed in service hydrogen fuel cell railway technology; hydrail.

The news from Berlin is that Bombardier and China's Ministry of Railways have signed a "Multi-level Strategic Cooperation Agreement." Per the release, Bombardier and China "... look forward to working together in the development of new, game-changing technologies.”

Nothing in the Bombardier Transport release alludes to hydrail. But it's a European company and the European Union knows hydrail well. As of this summer, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna knows it too. UNIDO sponsored the Mooresville/Appalachian State University 2010 International Hydrail Conference in Istanbul. A German scholar spoke there. As a doctoral student in the UK, he's earning one of the world's first two Ph.D.'s in hydrail.

It's just possible that Bombardier's Berlin operation has never even heard of hydrail but the dots are there and they beg connecting.

The first dot is the 2007 flurry of Canadian news items saying that Ontario and Bombardier were considering building a hydrogen commuter train for Greater Ontario with a view to exporting hydrail trains and creating jobs at their big Thunder Bay railroad equipment plant. I've predicted on a number of occasions that a Thunder Bay-built train would appear by mid-decade on the Charlotte Area Transit Line toward Mooresville. The recent news makes that even more likely--but now the train's innards may not be Canadian.

The second dot has fuzzy edges but it is very big indeed. It's this: no technology lives forever and hydrail is the only realistic long-term general replacement for petroleum traction (diesel-electric) power.

Bio-diesel gets some press but it faces three fatal obstacles as a general rail solution: (1) In the amounts required by rail, the resource competition with food cultivation would be prohibitive. (2) Subjecting the national heavy transportation infrastructure fuel supply to the agricultural whims of weather is a non-starter, strategically. And (3), for the US Navy and Air Force to wean themselves off petroleum (many Navy vessels are way too small to nuke-up), the military will probably need all the bio-fuel the US can grow.

As to track electrification, overhead power is still being installed.  But, like magnetic levitation, it's limited by practical economics to a few highly specialized routes while hydrail goes anywhere. The high cost and limited prospective supply of copper (plus the enormous cost of engineering, construction and perpetual maintenance of the superstructure) means that track electrification may outlive diesel but probably not by much.

It's encouraging that the US Department of Defense had the foresight to fund the invention of hydrail. It's discouraging that no US manufacturer picked-up the hydrail ball to run with it. Rather, we've fumbled and now China is running the ball toward our goal with Canada, Germany and others running interference.

In Cancún, yet another round of finger-pointing, quota-flinging and mutual frustration is winding down at the UN Climate Talks. When addressing climate change, the international focus remains on competitive administrivia when agreement on technological possibilities, like hydrail and the small-scale maritime hydrogen applications that the Netherlands are now deploying, could actually cut carbon emissions.

Napoleon famously said, "Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world."

Today, on the opposite side of the world from Cancún, a wide-awake China may be saying, "Let the West sleep. By the time they wake up, hydrail will be as Chinese as gunpowder, the compass and moveable type. Finders, keepers."

Mooresville’s Stan Thompson is a retired strategic planner and environmental futurist for AT&T. His column appears every other week in the Tribune. Email him at: HST2nd@aol.com