As Bald Rick points out you are comparing lifetime including manufacturing and operational figures. Looking at a Dutch study they found that a Tesla Model 3 generates 40gCO2e per vehicle KM.
So broadly the same as the average of all rail in either 2018/19 or 2020/21, yet your comparing only electric cars (which may improve efficiency a bit over time and will see reductions due to the greening of the grid) with the average of rail (which will certainly see further reductions from even just the electrification schemes currently being built and the new bimodal trains on order, before we consider the greening of the grid).
However, even in 2043 (so 20 years from now) there's still going to be some ICE road vehicles which will make the average emissions from roads worse than if it was 100% EV for all road vehicles. Potentially to the point where the future average emissions of rail, even if 99.5% of cars are EV and we've done very little beyond the currently committed to rail improvements to reduce carbon emissions, still manage to edge out that of road vehicles.
Also I think it is instructive to look at the rail gCO2e per vehicle KM figures these for 21/22
Electric 358.5 Diesel 1399.6
I highlight these because within the average figures there are lots of journeys where no electric trains are used at all. For example the 2019 average figure is arguably lower not just due to the overall passenger kms but the proportion of passenger kms on electrified London and south east TOCs. The same journeys you wouldn't make in car however it was powered.
Take two example itineraries; Leicester to Newcastle Upon Tyne or Hereford to Southampton lots of diesel used there not
I suspect that the actual numbers taking the train between Southampton and Hereford is very low compared to even the numbers traveling between (say) Southampton and Farnborough, as such whilst there's a lot of routes which don't use electric rail it doesn't mean that there's a lot of people using them.
This is borne out by it previously being about the same total emissions for diesel trains as electric trains, as there are far more electric trains.
The other thing to note, to get to 40g/passenger on those diesel services you need 35 people on each vehicle. Whilst that's impossible in first class coach on a Voyager, you only need marginally more than 1 person per pair of seats across the rest of the train to exceed that. Whilst Voyagers are more fuel hungry than other DMU's, you wouldn't need many more seats filled to get to broadly the same value. Maybe about 5 out of 8 in standard.
However, it should also be remembered that both the ICWC Voyagers and the comparable Meridians are due to be replaced with bimodal trains about now, and so over time these are likely to further reduce the need for as much diesel by rail as had been the case in the past.
You are the one suggesting that HS2 will dramatically improve the climate crisis by reducing domestic flights not me.
Whilst not aimed at me, I haven't said that cutting domestic flights would dramatically reduce carbon emissions, however it is a reduction and we need to have all the reductions we can get incase something else doesn't reduce emissions as much as we'd hoped.
As such building HS2 to aid in that is no bad thing. However it's never going to get rid of all domestic flights, due to Northern Ireland being a significant driver of domestic flights.
There's going to be a period of time where we're unlikely to be able to produce enough zero emissions fuel to power all the domestic flights (let alone international flights) and so being able to use those limited fuels where there's not a viable options rather than spreading then across every current flight will mean that we'll be in a better position overall.
The period of time until we've got to the point where we've covered all the over sea domestic flights and international flights is going to be considerably longer.
That is either a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what I said. I suggested that if you reduce van emissions by a just quarter this would give a 9x greater reduction if you banned domestic flights nothing to do with HS2
I thought the point was to reduce emissions as quickly as possible to improve the climate crisis, so retiring them as soon as you can reduces emissions further and faster then getting some mode shift in 15 years.
Yes we need to reduce emissions as fast as possible, that means doing everything that we can, not only those which lead to the biggest impacts.
The British Cycle teams are fastest not because they only do the big changes but because they've looked at what will happen if they gain several 0.05 seconds per lap. As 10 of them is half a second faster which means that if someone else had only looked at the one thing that gains them 0.2 seconds then then British team will beat them.
However the British team will also be looking at those 0.2 second gains as well as the 0.05 seconds gain. That's what we need to be doing with carbon emissions.
Even something which appears as pointless in global emissions terms as walking 500m rather than driving it is important. As if every household in a village of 4,600 homes reduced their milage by an average of 2 miles week or would reduce the milage traveled by the same distance as to the moon and back.
No whilst that's likely to be about 1% of the milage that they do as a community, it's something which they would likely benefit directly from as most of that reduced milage will be within the confines of the village.
I'm not attacking HS2 I support HS2. I'm also not suggesting that it goes only after small emitters. I'm arguing that you argument for supporting HS2 on the basis of reducing carbon emission by eliminating domestic flights is just a peripheral benefit.
Whilst it may be a peripheral benefit, it could mean that the embedded emission from construction of HS2 could be wiped out within 10 years just from the withdrawal of London/Scotland flights.
It's also likely that there would be some associated reduction in emissions (such as car travel to/from the airport or even some small reduction in international flights as the connection between regional airports and hub airports gets harder). Again it may not be large, but it's still moving the amount of carbon being created in the right direction.
Someone once said that globally we've managed to reduce emissions significantly each year so that the rate of growth is just 1%, however that still misses the point. In that we should be reducing our emissions not only reducing the rate of growth.
If more had been done to reduce internal flights where rail could be a viable option (for example where rail travel time of up to 4 hours are possible) across the globe as well as pushing harder (globally) to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels in advance of this year (which likely would have made Russia weaker against Ukraine) we could have seen emissions reduce year on year by 1%.
Yes internal flights globally aren't going to get us near to that 2% fall (from +1% to -1%), with much of it needing to come from other measures, however it could make the difference between a 1.9% fall and a 2.0% fall.
Now that may sound tiny, however the thing with carbon emissions is that the sooner we reduce then the sooner that the planet can deal with the CO2. As whilst CO2 can last hundreds of years in the atmosphere, about 50% gets broken down within a few decades. Therefore, if we reduce our emissions from 100 tonnes to 99 tonnes, not only is there 1 tonne less now but in (say) 30 years time there's 1.5 tonnes less just from that saving.
That still may not sound much, but let's say we repeat that 1 tonne saved over there next 30 years, you'll not only have saved 30 tonnes but probably there'll be a further (say) 7 tonnes less as the natural processes wouldn't have had to break down as much.
Yet we're not getting to the point where we're strting to see the growth in emissions turn negative, let alone see the actual amount in the atmosphere start to get back to even 2015 levels (Paris Climate Conference) let alone 1992 levels (Rio Climate Conference).
Yes "but China...." so what, we're not China, and guess what there's plenty who won't do anything until it's harder not to do the right thing. Take for instance plastic straws, of there's enough demand in rich countries that they swap to paper straws the rest of the world has little choice but to follow as the profits aren't there to only make plastic straws for those countries not willing to swap to them.
Even the US has seen their cars have better fuel efficiency, as people look at other countries and think "if they can run their cars with fuel prices that high, imagine how much I'd save of I could run that car on the price of fuel here". Now there'll be plenty who would say "yes, but it won't be as powerful", however the UK doesn't appear to have a shortage of cars which can pull a caravan, that can keep up with larger engine cars a few years older than them, etc.
