Green Metro Stations Pointless
by Alvin MacIntoshJuly 25th, 2008, 5:17 pm
DC Metro announced today that all new and substantially rehabilitated Metro facilities will be designed and built with the goal of receiving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification.
This is commendable, but I wonder what share of Metro’s utility bill actually belongs to the stations and maintenance facilities. No readily available data from WMATA on this, but my guess is that electricity for the trains is the bulk of the $72.2 million Metro shelled out last year for power.
NEWS FLASH: Electric trains are only as eco-friendly as the power plants behind them. (The same goes for plug-in electric cars, for that matter.)
According to the Department of Energy, the greenie weenie fuels – the renewable and therefore sustainable kinds like hydroelectric (both conventional and pumped storage) and wind power – made up 5.1% of the net megawatt hours generated in DC, Maryland, and Virginia (Pepco and Dominion supply the nearly all of the electricity for these markets). Natural gas made up a further 7.6% of the total, which although it doesn’t release much in the way of carbon into the atmosphere, isn’t exactly renewable – or cheap.
Eco-nasty fuels (coal (52% of total), oil, and uranium (34% of total), which, although it doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases, is reviled by myopic greenie weenies) powered 87.3% of the total electricity generated for DC and its neighbors.
Metrorail may not put much more than hot air and farts into the atmosphere by itself, but it sure gets its clean power from some “dirty” sources. How about they invest in more energy-efficient trains, or better yet get their butts and actually expand the Metrorail network instead of just talking about it and conducting study after study after study.
Posted in Environmentalism, Mass Transit, Subways |
In all of my research on the stop all DC highways to fund WMATA — ignoring that the 1962 and later plans featured highways AND Metro — I have not found anything about this concern of where the electricity to run Metro was to come.
I guess the DC elites were pretty much ok with it coming from coal fired plants in less politically affluent areas- as can be expected from such ilk.
Thanks as always for joining the conversation, Doug.
To be fair to WMATA, they are a customer of Pepco and Dominion, and therefore have little say in what plants operate and what sorts of plants get built in the future. Coal and nuclear are cheap, though, and reliably so. This is why these types of power plants were built and why they are used around the country to provide the base load of electric generation. Coal is a lot cleaner than it used to be, but it still isn’t stellar.
You can’t call yourself “green” when at least half of your electricity comes from coal.
To be clear, though, I don’t have a problem with half of WMATA’s electricity coming from coal. My point is two-fold: the first part is that the stations and buildings aren’t the biggest consumers of electricity in WMATA’s house — that distinction belongs to the trains; the second part is that even if the new “green” facilities use less electricity — and even if Metro were to upgrade to more energy-efficient trains — the electricity they use still comes from coal and uranium. I personally have no problem with these fuels. I just think it’s deceptive to put a green blanket over the electricity you buy from a coal-fired power plant and ask for a medal.