From Beijing to the coastal city of Tianjin, it is almost the same distance as from Copenhagen to Nyborg. With a high-speed train, the trip to Tianjin from the Chinese capital takes only half an hour. It was almost a revolution in China when the Beijing-Tianjin route was opened in the summer of 2008 as the first high-speed line in the country. Interested travelers flocked, followed the speedometers on the info screens that could reach up to 350 km/h, and watched the scenery fly by. But now the 117-kilometer high-speed line on the Beijing-Tianjin route is no longer so special. In the 15 years since the first trains ran from Beijing, the development of high-speed rail has exploded in China. Now there are approximately 42,000 kilometers of track – so since 2008, the stretch of the Chinese high-speed rail network has grown from the Copenhagen-Nyborg distance to reach all the way around the world, and still have a few thousand kilometers of track left. In comparison, Spain, the country with the second most kilometers of high-speed rail, has approximately 4,000 kilometers of routes. And the national Chinese railway company will build another 2,500 kilometers this year. It is very good for the climate. The high-speed trains already save many millions of tonnes of CO2 every year by drawing passengers from domestic flights and by making room on ordinary railways for freight trains. And since the trains are electric, the climate effect only becomes greater the greener the Chinese electricity production becomes – and wind and solar energy are growing rapidly in the country. Cuts greenhouse gases The Chinese high-speed trains connect the country’s many million cities quickly, cheaply and efficiently, so they are quite popular. Each year they have approximately two billion passengers. And a large part of the train travelers would otherwise have taken a plane. Chinese and American researchers estimate that the high-speed trains have cut greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector in China by almost a fifth, and they estimate that in 2017 alone it saved the atmosphere 12 million CO2. The researchers point out that air travel then emitted seven times as much CO2 as a corresponding stretch of high-speed rail. – Flying is simply not the same mass transport system as railways are, says Henrik Sylvan, who heads the Center for Railway Technology at the Technical University of Denmark. – That is why high-speed trains are fundamentally a good idea, because they can transport many more people in a much more climate-friendly manner. Previous Chinese research also shows how various domestic flight routes actually closed after high-speed trains were built on the same route, because the trains stole passengers from the airlines. At the same time, there is another slightly more surprising climate effect from the high-speed trains. They not only take passengers from the planes, but also from the normal, slower train lines. And when there is more space on the train lines, there will be more space for freight trains. This means fewer diesel lorries to transport goods and cargo, according to researchers from China, Singapore and Hong Kong. They estimate that it reduced greenhouse gas emissions by just under 15 million tonnes each year between 2008 and 2016. Electricity becomes greener Since they run on electricity, the climate potential of the high-speed trains is directly linked to how green the electricity is. And in China, most of the electricity still comes from coal. But that is changing. China is the country in the world with the most coal power – but also the country with the most solar, wind and hydropower. The share of coal in electricity production has fallen from 80 per cent, when the first high-speed train started in 2008, to 61 per cent in 2022. Therefore, high-speed trains will only become a better and better climate solution the faster the green transition comes. But even though the climate effect is already great, says Henrik Sylvan, the Chinese are not actually building the many thousands of kilometers of high-speed trains primarily because of climate considerations. – They have not decided to create a green revolution, he explains. – Instead, it is about connecting the population groups in China together. All big cities must be connected. It will create cohesion and economic development due to increased mobility. Slow in Europe By the way, the same ideas are behind a number of older European plans and visions for a network of high-speed trains across the continent, says Henrik Sylvan. – The EU decided more than 30 years ago that they wanted to create a trans-European railway network from Portugal to Scandinavia and from east to west. The target was 30,000 kilometers and countries such as France and Spain pushed and started building, he explains, who by the way even then worked on the Danish input to the plan. But it never succeeded in creating a completely coherent system in Europe. – It has been several years since I gave up following how slowly development is going here, says Henrik Sylvan. He explains that some prioritize land more than others, and that the planning of infrastructure is very different from country to country in Europe. It also makes it difficult to coordinate between the countries. Large infrastructure plans can also easily be blocked by various considerations for e.g. the environment and draw out the time. – But China has a centralized political system that has this infrastructure, he says. – This does not mean that they are indifferent to, for example, the environment, and they fly in the best environmental professors when they have to decide something. But there is maximum political power behind the plans for the network. At the same time, economies of scale and today the world’s greatest expertise in building them mean that the construction price is much lower than in Europe – while the quality is higher. All that means that things are slower in the EU and faster in China. – In 10 years, China built what Europe has not built in 30 years, and they have followed the best technical standards, says Henrik Sylvan. The only competitor to airplanes Already now, the network is without comparison the world’s largest. But the future plans are even bigger. The national railway company has plans to reach 50,000 kilometers of high-speed rail in 2025 and 70,000 kilometers in 2035. The plan is for all cities with more than half a million inhabitants to be part of the network. – So it will really affect the mobility of individuals, says Henrik Sylvan, and I believe that they will get the most out of it both in terms of cohesion and climate impact. According to him, high-speed rail is “the ultimate smart” mode of transport because of the high speed of travel over long distances. – People always demand greater range. It is almost an inherent force: we want to travel as far as possible for the same price and the same amount of time. And here, trains are the only thing that can compete with planes, says Henrik Sylvan.
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China is betting on high-speed trains. It saves many millions of tonnes of CO2 every year.
