November 2015: Transport for London latest ‘Health, Safety and Environment’ report has been recently posted online – available to download here (direct link here).
An important issue in relation to carbon emissions raised in the report, is London Underground’s reliance on grid supplied electricity:
“For electricity, we calculate the total CO2 emissions generated by multiplying the amount of energy we use by the Government’s annual emissions factor. This measures how much CO2 was emitted during the energy generation process, for example by power stations. It depends directly on the grid mix, eg the amount and type of fuel (coal or renewable energy) that was used to generate the national grid electricity in that year. Figure 9 shows that there was a 10 per cent rise in the carbon intensity of the grid mix in 2014/15. This means that our electricity-based CO2 emissions results are indicating a similar level of increase. To show the underlying trend of the change in energy use, rather than the change affected by the energy source, over which we largely have no control, we are for the first time also reporting our total energy consumption figures as kilowatt hours.”
No mention is made in the report of TfL’s activities to increase the amount of renewable electricity it generates or – curiously – efforts being made by GLA to help source local, decentralised electricity supplies for TfL through their Licence Lite programme.