Diesel locomotives instead of electricity
Rising energy prices are demanding more and more unpleasant decisions. In Great Britain, they have now been forced to replace electric locomotives with diesel locomotives. The line to Glasgow, where the climate summit is currently taking place, is also affected.
In Germany, the first gas supplier went off the grid in September. The operator, Deutsche Energiepool, could no longer guarantee a supply of gas. In Great Britain, the situation looks even worse: Since August, about ten suppliers stopped supplying gas. Electricity in the UK is largely generated from natural gas and the price of this has risen by 440 per cent since the beginning of the year.
Now the railways have also switched from electric to diesel. Just in time for the climate summit in Glasgow, railway companies have pushed the electric locomotives into the depots and put old diesel locomotives on the tracks. They are slower, louder and above all dirtier, but the increased energy prices make this step unavoidable. The large logistics company Freightliner, which is responsible for a large part of the goods and raw material deliveries within the kingdom, now only runs with individual electric locomotives, otherwise exclusively with diesel locomotives. This is also the case on the connection between England and Scotland. At the time of the climate summit in Glasgow, of all places, pollutant emissions on the British Isles will be increased once again. Boris Johnson's promise that the price of fuel would fall for everyone after the EU exit is unlikely to be kept in view of further expected bankruptcies of energy suppliers. On top of that, the British electricity market is made up of 70 different suppliers, of which the smaller ones cannot compensate for the energy shortage. For another, important nuclear power plants were already shut down in the summer and are now no longer available to fill the gaps in the energy supply.
While Germany buys its nuclear power on a large scale from other EU countries, the UK no longer has this option: it is thus even more compellingly tied to the exploration and development of sustainable energy sources. It will be interesting to see what impact the explosion in electricity prices has on the e-car market. Given the high prices, it is to be expected that sales of such vehicles will experience a damper.