Energy and Environment

"The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century. We are not going to move backwards. We are going to move forward."
President Obama, June 2, 2010

Electrified high speed trains must be a central component of the new national energy strategy called for by President Obama.

We depend on oil for everything we do, from growing food to producing medications.

Since 1983 the world has consumed more oil annually than it has discovered in every year but two. A few months ago, the U.S. military sounded the alarm, because soon there might not be enough to meet its needs. The remaining oil is getting more expensive and risky to produce, as demonstrated by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since 71% of oil in the U.S. is consumed in transportation, transforming our travel network will be a critical component of dealing with the increasing gap between supply and demand.

Because high speed rail consumes nearly 10 times less fuel than cars and six times less than planes, adopting this technology can dramatically reduce our energy needs and our over-reliance on oil, and help drastically reduce harmful emissions.

High-speed trains will help in two ways. There is the direct reduction in oil consumption for each individual trip. The secondary impacts of creating more walkable cities and towns are also very important.

A Midwest bullet train network would:

  • Reduce carbon emissions by more than 1 million pounds annually
  • Reduce vehicle miles traveled by 4.3 billion annually
  • Cut oil consumption by 3 million barrels a year

That's our ticket to a vibrant green economy and a healthier planet.

* Different modes of transportation rely on different forms of energy. A car uses gasoline, which gives energy to the car by being burned in the car’s engine. A high-speed train draws its energy from the power grid through overhead wires, which send electricity to electric motors in the train. Different types of fossil fuels also have different amounts of energy. One gallon of gasoline has a slightly higher amount of energy than a gallon of jet fuel, for example. Because of the difficulty inherent to trying to make these comparisons, this chart uses Megajoules. A Megajoule is simply 1 million joules, the SI (Le Système International d'unités – International System) unit for energy. For comparison, there are 155.1 Megajoules in one gallon of gasoline. So a car that gets 25 miles per gallon of gas would use 6.2 Megajoules per mile. If that car were carrying 4 people, then each person would be using 1.55 Megajoules per mile. By comparison, each passenger on a high-speed train uses .48 Megajoules per mile. Converted to gallons of gas, that ends up as 100 miles per gallon for each car passenger, and 322.9 for each passenger on a high-speed train.
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