Traveling by train is more environmentally friendly than driving – right? Not necessarily, says expert Klaus Radermacher. He took a closer look at the CO2 footprint of the transport infrastructure and came to the conclusion that the railways are far less green than many people think.
Those who pay attention to their own CO2 footprint when traveling are more likely to choose the train than the car or the plane. Train travel is considered sustainable and green. A cliche, says Dr. Klaus Radermacher.
The computer scientist studied in Karlsruhe and Boston and then worked in managerial positions at home and abroad for Deutsche Telekom. In Gabor Steingart’s “Pioneer Podcast” he clears up what he considers to be a one-sided view of transport systems.
“I’m not against traveling by train,” he clarified in an interview. “But I resist this sweeping statement: traveling by train is environmentally friendly.”
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He criticizes that the discussion about environmental friendliness is always about the drive energy. The general recommendation is therefore: Instead of flying, it’s better to take the train.
On the website “mein-klimaschutz.de” it says: “Compared to a domestic flight, a trip by train causes up to ten times fewer emissions per passenger. This saves 270 kg of CO2 on a return trip between Cologne and Berlin.”
From the point of view of climate protectors, buses and trains are the means of transport of choice, especially for longer journeys. However, such calculations do not take into account the CO2 footprint caused by the production of the transport systems.
If you include these, a completely different picture emerges, says Radermacher. He and his team show this in the study “Holistic ecological assessment of transport systems”, commissioned by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. In doing so, they consider the CO2 footprint of the infrastructure.
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This includes the route infrastructure (roads and rails), the junction infrastructure (train stations, airports, parking space) and the control infrastructure (points, air traffic control systems, traffic lights). In particular, the path infrastructure of the railway does not exactly have a positive environmental balance, the study shows.
Railway tracks are therefore very steel-intensive and therefore also CO2-intensive in production. “The infrastructure that is necessary to run a train at all causes gigantic amounts of CO2 in production,” summarizes Radermacher.
The very one-sided promotion of rail is therefore not thought through to the end. Radermacher has an explanation for why the idea of the environmentally friendly railway is so persistent: he calls it the “spinach lie”.
For decades, the claim that spinach contains ten times the iron of other vegetables has been circulating – this was later disproved. The situation is similar with the supposedly green railway in Rademacher’s eyes. “I call this a spinach error, because a false statement does not become true through constant repetition,” says Radermacher.
But what does that mean for people in everyday life? Is flying more environmentally friendly than taking the train? After all, no path infrastructure has to be built for airplanes, the sky is always available.
Radermacher actually recommends that a family traveling from Berlin to Paris travel by plane. Unless she was traveling with four or five people in a very economical car.
The expert advocates change. “As long as certain systems are sponsored with tens of billions of euros every year, there will be no price transparency,” he says. With regard to CO2 pollution, a more holistic approach is needed. Existing infrastructure must be used more efficiently.
