City Briefing

Reducing Transport Emissions

Thursday, 28 September 2017 5.00 - 6.15pm
Ethos Urban, 173 Sussex Street, Sydney NSW 2000

Frank Szanto is an engineer with Downer Rail, involved in the design, production and maintenance of diesel locomotives and double-deck passenger trains. In November 2011 he gave us new understanding of why Australia was (and is) stuck with "not so-high speed rail”.

This time Frank will explain that calculating the CO2 emissions avoided by investing in photovoltaics is rather tricky. He will tell us that gas and renewable energy sources have caused coal-fired generation to fall (which of course we knew), but worry us by revealing that emissions from transport have increased. By far the largest share of this comes from road transport, and more than half of that from cars. About 30 trains would be needed to replace the 3000 to 4000 trucks on the road nightly between Sydney and Melbourne, and their value would be much improved if we straightened out the track. Could renewable energy power trains? Do come and find out.

Speaker

Frank Szanto is an engineer with Downer Rail, involved in the design, production and maintenance of diesel locomotives and double-deck passenger trains. In November 2011 he gave us new understanding of why Australia was (and is) stuck with "not so-high speed rail”.