(The following story by Meir Rinde appeared on the Times of Trenton website on June 10, 2009.)
TRENTON, N.J. — A red and blue locomotive stood out at the city’s transit station yesterday, and not just because it was a freight engine sitting on a passenger track.
CSX Transportation and PSEG Power received special permission to bring in and show off a new, low-polluting freight locomotive, which they say demonstrates their dedication to environmentally friendly policies.
PSEG contributed $3.25 million to retrofit three locomotives as part of its compliance with a consent decree, which also required it to spend hundreds of millions to reduce emissions from its coal-fired power plants on Duck Island and in Hudson County.
The utility was required to work to reduce emissions of fine particles that cause asthma and premature death, but the rebuilt locomotives will also spew less nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, both greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
CSX will begin operating the locomotive next week and retrofit the two others over the next year, the company said.
“It’s my understanding that the emission reduction benefit of the locomotive project is equivalent to removing 41,000 cars off the road, as it relates to fine particulates,” Eric Svenson Jr., PSEG Power’s vice president for environment, health and safety, said during an afternoon press conference inside the station.
Instead of one large diesel electric generator, the GenSet locomotive is fitted with two smaller generators and has room for a third. It can use just one generator if it is hauling a lighter load, allowing it to consume less fuel and emit fewer pollutants, CSX officials said.
The switching locomotive, which will be used to move freight cars over short trips within New Jersey, also stores reserve power and goes into a sleep mode when parked, avoiding the idling that is blamed for much of the emissions trains produce.
“It’s a step toward using less energy,” said Patrick McGettigan, an engineer who stopped by to look at the locomotive with several colleagues from LTK, an Ambler, Pa., rail industry consulting firm. “To be able to pick and choose what kind of energy you use, and not waste it, is impressive.”
Wolfgang Skacel, an assistant commissioner at the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the $4 million project will help cut “mobile source” emissions from various kinds of vehicles, the largest uncontrolled source of particulates.
“To me, it’s a very big deal,” he said. “This is the first locomotive to actually meet EPA’s new standards that are supposed to kick into effect in 2015.”
He also commended PSEG’s wider environmental efforts, saying the company set a “gold standard.”
PSEG has been vilified by environmentalists as the operator of the state’s dirtiest power plants, but in response to a 2002 consent decree with state and federal officials and subsequent sanctions has spent billions to retrofit its coal-fired plants.
While it has also invested in wind and solar energy and prepared for an anticipated national cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions, it has still come under criticism from environmentalists like Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter, for continuing to emit greenhouse gases in the interim.
Tittel said yesterday that he would prefer to see locomotives that do not use any pollution-producing fuels at all.
“In order to have really clean transit, it needs to be powered by clean energy,” he said. “They should be electric-diesel hybrids and should be powered by renewable energy or natural gas.”