Lord Adonis: The man in charge of the train set -
Profiles, People – The Independent.

By Michael Savage
Written off as a Blairite, the new Transport Secretary has made a startling new beginning in a job that he has always wanted

When Lord Adonis, the man behind New Labour’s controversial shake-up of the education system, left the education department for a new job looking after the nation’s railways, the end looked nigh for the most Blairite of Blairites.

It was seen as a hint that he would not last long under the leadership of Gordon Brown and that his drive to relaunch struggling schools with private money had lost favour. His relocation to the Department for Transport (DfT) was written up as an unwelcome consolation prize for a politician on the way out.

However, that version of events was laid to rest in the mind of one political rival upon their first visit to Lord Adonis’s new office. Two documents lay on his desk. One was a historic train timetable from the 1920s, the other an opposition party’s transport policy manifesto, criss-crossed with yellow marker pen. The obsessive attention to detail Adonis had demonstrated during his time running the rule over Britain’s schools was being applied to the railways immediately. “You cannot have big ideas, unless you understand the detail,” he told The Independent, appropriately enough from a train heading to Marylebone station. “In all my experience of public service reform, it is intimate knowledge of the detail which helps you generate those big ideas. I hope I know my stuff.”

Now officially in charge of the whole train set since being promoted to Secretary of State at the last reshuffle, he has wasted no time in showing he means business, renationalising one of Britain’s most popular rail lines rather than handing taxpayers’ cash to its struggling private owner. In acting tough against National Express and taking back the keys to the East Coast mainline, he effectively ended the company’s future in the rail industry. His steely underbelly had been noted by mandarins before, earning him the nickname Muscles while an education minister. His premature obituary writers have been left in no doubt about his renewed enthusiasm. “I’m passionate about transport, so this is my dream job,” he said.

His fastidious qualities have seen him eclipse two of his former bosses while in Government. He drew up Labour’s education policies while under the supposed leadership of Ruth Kelly. Business and political figures often chose to deal directly with Lord Adonis when he was a transport minister, bypassing the former Transport Secretary, Geoff Hoon. “He is the man getting things done,” one rail executive told The Independent before Lord Adonis’s promotion to the top job. “He is the one making decisions.” A senior Tory agreed. “He was the de facto Secretary of State.”

At first glance, his background looks quintessentially New Labour. Like Tony Blair, he was privately educated, attending Kingham Hill boarding school in the Cotswolds. He went on to Oxford, where he earned a first and a DPhil before taking up a fellowship at Nuffield College. But his educational achievements belie the fact that he had a difficult childhood. He managed to win a place at boarding school through a public scholarship, having grown up in a north London council estate, spending some time in a care home. He admits he spent much of the time unhappy. Friends say his range of experiences played a major part in his drive to reform the education system, having benefited from his boarding school days. Though now a Labour member, he served as a Liberal Democrat councillor and backed the SDP before joining the party. Despite his apparent political journey, he has said he would not take a job offered to him by a Tory government.

After a stint as a journalist at the Financial Times and then as a columnist at The Observer, he joined Tony Blair’s policy unit, masterminding plans to wrest control of schools away from public authorities, introduce top-up fees, and reinvent struggling schools through the city academies programme. It was a controversial set of ideas from the start and won him many critics. His policies soon became known in the education world by the acronym ABA, standing for “Adonis Blair Axis” among the polite, or “Andrew Bloody Adonis” among the more distracted.

There seems little to connect the education of children and the punctuality of commuter trains, but there is one clear motive behind his passion for both. “I’ve always been very interested in modernising public services and I’ve always seen transport as a key part of that,” he said. “I’m interested in the social purpose of public transport. A good society is one that has a well-functioning public transport system and in this country we have historically had a very patchy one. We were the first country in the world to have a railway system, but we let it stagnate badly in the 20th century.”

As for the suggestion that he left the education department because he could not work under the new Secretary of State and Prime Minster’s right-hand man, Ed Balls, he was baffled by it. “It was totally untrue,” he said. “I’d been working on education policy for a long time and needed a new challenge. I’d always been interested in high-speed rail.” Most politicians with any sense would fight tooth and nail to avoid the political graveyard of the DfT, which has seen 12 secretaries of state come and go in just 20 years. Yet it was Adonis who approached Brown with an offering – to move him to the department and allow him to push ahead with an extraordinary plan to bring high-speed rail to Britain. He certainly isn’t playing it down the scale of the project. “It will be one of the biggest infrastructure projects the country has ever undertaken and we’ve been embracing it with real enthusiasm,” he said. “I’m a man on a mission.”

His stock shot up after he embarked on an epic tour of the country by rail to discover such oddities as being unable to find something to eat at Southampton at 8pm. His political opponents have found themselves falling victim to his work rate. Norman Baker, the Lib Dem transport spokesman, was pleasantly surprised to be invited to join him on his adventure at Lewes, though Baker was a little disheartened to discover Adonis was eager to catch a train at 5.30am. “We were pretty much the only two people on the train,” Baker said. “We had a bleary-eyed conversation. But it is great that he is happy to talk things over very openly.” His desire to deal with the minutiae of everything from the frequency of trains to Kettering to the number of bike racks at stations is a mixed blessing for the rail bosses. “He has a lot of ideas,” one rail company chief executive said. “It is great that he is interested in what we’re doing, but sometimes it is easier when the Secretary of State prefers to do nothing.”

However, the state of Britain’s coffers is in danger of damaging his ambitions. There are serious questions over whether a man with such zeal for big reforms can operate in an era marked by spending cuts and the rebalancing of public finances. But judging by how he dealt with cash-strapped rail companies this week, the Prime Minister will have a fight on his hands if he attempts to row back on the deal he made with Muscles over high-speed rail. Anyone spending even a few minutes talking to the new Transport Secretary is left in no doubt that it is a resignation issue.

A life in brief

Born: Andrew Adonis, 22 February 1963, north London.

Early life: Won a scholarship to Kingham Hill school, Oxfordshire. Gained a first-class a degree in modern history from Keble College, Oxford and a DPhil from Christ Church College, Oxford.

Career: Became a Lib Dem councillor in Oxford in 1987 before taking a fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford. Moved into journalism, first with the Financial Times and then The Observer. Joined Prime Minister’s policy unit in 2001. Appointed to the Lords and made an education minister in 2005. Moved to transport in October last year, becoming the Secretary of State last month.

He says: “I’m a man on a mission. I’m passionate about transport, so this is my dream job.”

They say: “It is good to have a Transport Secretary who is actually interested in transport.” Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat transport spokesman

The Seven Ways To Solve The Energy Problem.

Chris Nelder|Jul. 4, 2009, 7:05 AM|26
I have dished out a healthy share of criticism about the paths we are taking into the energy future, so perhaps it’s time I offered some paths of my own. I will outline them as simply as possible, since the data and thinking behind them could fill a book.

First we must know where we’re going.

Credible models show that by the end of this century, essentially all of the fossil fuels on earth will be consumed—oil, natural gas, and coal. Presumably, whatever fuels do remain at that point will be reserved for their highest and most valuable purposes like making crude oil into plastics and pharmaceuticals, not burning it in 15% efficient internal combustion engines.

Consider the following world model for all fossil fuels:

Source: “Olduvai Revisited 2008,” The Oil Drum, by Luís de Sousa and Euan Mearns. Cumulative peak of fossil fuel energy is 2018. Data sources: Jean Laherrère for natural gas, Energy Watch Group for coal and The Oil Drum for oil. [This is an exceptional study and I recommend it to my readers!]

By the end of this century then, a mere 90 years from now, we’ll need to have an infrastructure that runs exclusively on renewably generated electricity, biofuels, and possibly nuclear energy. That’s where we’re going.

Fortunately, there is more than enough available renewable energy to meet all of our needs, if we can harness it. Unfortunately, we’re starting from a point at which less than 2% of the world’s energy comes from renewables like wind, solar and geothermal.

Hydro provides about 6%, and nuclear about 6%, but for reasons too numerous to get into here, some of which my longtime readers have already heard, I don’t believe either source will increase much in the future, and both could actually decline.

Our challenge then is to make that 2% fraction grow to replace about 86% of the world’s current primary energy, in 90 years or less.

We are currently at peak oil, a short, roughly 5-year plateau which goes into terminal decline around 2012. All fossil fuel energy combined peaks around 2018, less than a decade from now.

All strategies for accommodating the fossil fuel decline require decades to have any significant effect. The now-iconic study “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management” (Hirsch et al., 2005) demonstrated that it would take at least 20 years of intensive, crash-program mitigation efforts to meet the peak oil challenge gracefully. Another study, “Primary Energy Substitution Models: On the Interaction between Energy and Society,” (C. Marchetti, 1977) showed that it generally takes decades to substitute one form of primary energy for another, and 100 years for a given source of energy to achieve 50% market penetration.

Therefore, we are going to have to accomplish most of the renewable energy revolution in a scenario of ever-declining fuel supply. In just 50 years, we’ll be working with about half our current energy budget. So in fact we may only have about 50 years to build most of the new renewable energy and efficiency capacity we will need to get us through the end of the century.

Another important factor is that exports will fall off much faster than total supply. (See my article on the oil export crisis from last year.) Foucher and Brown (2008) have shown that the world’s top five oil exporters could approach zero net oil exports by around 2031. Net energy importers like the US could be increasingly starved for fuel as decline sets in and accelerates, and net energy exporters could wind up shouldering much of the burden of new manufacturing. This factor means that we will have to front-load as much of our development as possible.

The final and most important factor is population. The few population models that actually take fossil fuel depletion into account assume that global population increases roughly out to the global fuel peak, and then stabilizes at that level or declines naturally while economic development promotes lower fertility rates and renewables and energy efficiency increase to fill the gap of declining fossil energy. I understand why this assumption is made—because the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate—and for the immediate purpose of this article I will go along with it. I will note however that history and scientific observation of populations suggest some sharp episodes of decline are more likely, and in my estimation we will end this century with a considerably smaller population than anyone forecasts, at some level well below today’s.

How, then, can we replace or offset through efficiency at least 40% of our current energy supply with renewables in the next 50 years, while fuel prices are rising and the global economy is flat or shrinking due to a lack of fuel?

A proper model for achieving this goal would be a very large undertaking, the sort of thing that should be done by a team of experts with a budget. (Is anybody at the Department of Energy listening?) But I can identify some key pathways that are, in my estimation, no-brainers. Because the solutions going forward will be quite different for each country, I will limit my recommendations to the US.

Seven Paths to Our Energy Future →
1: Rail. Rail should be Priority 1, and should be granted the largest portion of public funding.

2: Rooftop Solar PV. Utility scale projects like giant solar farms in the desert and giant wind farms in the Midwest (or offshore) all face serious hurdles in siting, permitting, environmental impact, and transmission capability. Rooftop photovoltaic (PV) solar systems face no such issues and can be deployed right now, building capacity incrementally over time.

3: Alternative Vehicles. Since reconfiguring our urban topology around transit and deploying light rail will take decades, we will need some transitional solutions that still allow us to get around in cars for a good many years.

4: Efficiency. Most of the efficiency gains we can make are thermal: reducing the energy it takes to heat and cool buildings.

5: Utility Scale Renewables. We’ll need large solar plants across the Southwest, and huge wind farms in the Midwest and offshore.

6: A Beefier, Smarter Grid. The good news is that we already have most of the technologies we need in this area. All that we lack is the will and the funding to put it in place.

7: Keep Drilling. If we back off too much too soon from oil and gas production, it could leave us without adequate or reasonably priced fuel to accomplish this transformation, and sink the entire effort.

By Eswar Prasad
Published: August 9 2009 19:32 | Last updated: August 9 2009 19:32
Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s government has been blowing hot and cold on economic reforms. The present political and economic circumstances in India – a stable political coalition and a rebound from the global recession – give Mr Singh a chance to deliver real reforms, which are crucial for sustained growth that does not leave behind much of the population. Marginalism on reforms now would be a colossal wasted opportunity.

Why bother with reforms? After all, India’s economy has weathered the global financial crisis quite well. This is testimony to the country’s tremendous potential – exemplified by a young labour force, a dynamic entrepreneurial class and an improving financial system. But India will always punch well below its weight if it does not remove barriers that keep it from fully tapping that potential.

The list of needed reforms is long. India’s labour laws, which constrain large enterprises in particular, have hurt productivity growth. Shackles on the educational system are keeping India from reaping the full benefits of its young workforce. The dilapidated physical infrastructure is hurting growth in all sectors.

Above all, financial sector reforms will determine the pace and quality of India’s growth. Loss of momentum in this area could be very costly, for finance is the thread that runs through all other reforms and will determine their ultimate impact.

The reform agenda is about the basics of financial development rather than sophisticated innovations. It is tempting to draw the lesson from the global financial crisis that a closeted economy with a state-dominated banking system is the best and safest option for India. But the financial system should be evaluated against a broader set of criteria.

The basic purpose of a financial system is to channel domestic savings and foreign capital into productive investment. On this criterion, which is how the financial system can contribute to growth, there is a long way to go. Indian banks may have held up well during the crisis but that does not make them efficient intermediaries that are channelling credit to its most productive uses. Many sectors of the economy, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are still starved of credit.

The banks should be freed of their role as instruments of social policy through government-directed lending programmes. This would allow them to channel credit to enterprises that could effectively convert financial capital into productive physical capital and generate desperately needed job growth. “Priority sectors” identified by the government, including agriculture, should get direct budget financing rather than subsidies through the financial system. A dose of private ownership would force public banks to become more efficient, especially some of the smaller ones that are unviable in their present form.

The opening up of corporate bond markets is also a priority to give firms an alternative way of raising finance, especially for long-term projects such as infrastructure investment.

While the crisis shows that weakly regulated exotic derivatives can wreak havoc, not all derivatives should be tarred with the same brush. Indeed, India has made progress on basic derivatives that enterprises use to hedge against various types of risk. For example, there is a huge demand from exporting and importing firms for derivatives to hedge currency risk and that market has flourished. Opening these markets to more participants, including foreign investors, and improving trading systems would make them more robust.

India’s strong growth over the past decade has reduced poverty but much of the population remains at the margins of subsistence. A better-functioning and broader financial system would help entrepreneurs to generate jobs. Wider access to banking products would help households save more efficiently and build up a buffer for a rainy day. The government has made it easier for banks to set up cashpoints but a lot more could be done to push forward initiatives such as mobile banking using cell phones and provision of basic banking services through retail outlets.

Mr Singh should seize this chance to rejuvenate the process of financial development and reforms. His legacy, and India’s future path to sustained and inclusive growth, depends on it.

The writer is a professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

Bringing America’s Trains Up to Speed

China’s High Speed Rail Will Leave U.S. in the Dust : TreeHugger.

While it attempts to kick-start its struggling auto industry, the U.S. is talking about building a high-speed rail network with an initial $8 billion in stimulus funds. Meanwhile, China is investing over $300 billion in high-speed rail through 2020, in a bid to speed ahead of the rest of the world’s train systems.

The numbers alone are head-spinning: 16,000 miles of new track by 2020, requiring 117 million tons of concrete just to construct the buttresses on which the tracks will lie. Top speeds from Beijing to Shanghai will approach 220 miles an hour, halving the current travel time to four hours. This year China Railway Company plans to hire 20,000 young engineers. Can we say leapfrogging?

Rail at Center of Stimulus Package
China’s high speed rail build-out is at the front and center of its stimulus spending, in large part out of fear: little is more intimidating to Beijing’s leaders than the sight of thousands of unemployed workers. So far the construction of the Beijing-Shanghai route alone has employed about 110,000 people.

The rest of China’s stimulus program is focused on building airports, highways and environmental projects, particularly water treatment plants.

But alongside the need for jobs, the demand for better rail in China is also significant. Last year saw 1.46 billion journeys by rail, a 10.9% rise from 2007. The figure could double by next decade.

Stunning Rail Plan
Most of the new high-speed links will not be considerably faster than European trains. Thirty-five lines for trains traveling at 125 mph or more, measuring 6,800 miles in total, will be brought into service by 2012, officials say, with 4,350 more miles by 2020.

But the first phase will include five major routes – three running north to south, two east to west – with trains reaching 217 mph or 236 mph.

China spent $44 billion last year — up from $12 billion in 2004 — on rail.

“I don’t think anything compares except maybe the growth of the U.S. rail network at the start of the 20th century,” John Scales, the transport coordinator for China at the World Bank, told the Times.
China Speeds Off
In a recent piece by Bill Powell in Fortune, China’s build-out plays foil to the U.S.’s sputtering $8 billion rail plans.

That $8 billion isn’t much considering that as of last month, 40 states submitted 278 pre-applications for various high-speed passenger rail projects, amounting to $102.5 billion in requests. California wants to link San Francisco with L.A. via a high-speed link. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants the private sector to get into the act, proposing a high-speed spur to connect Las Vegas with L.A. Final applications are due August 24, and the FRA will begin distributing funds in September.

As Americans wait for projects to be approved, by 2012 Chinese rail travelers could begin to use the largest, most technologically sophisticated rail system in the world.

Much of the high-end rail technology, by the way, is coming from overseas. Canada’s Bombardier is working on signaling systems and on 40 of the systems trains.

And the kicker to the Fortune piece:

Maybe, after environmental reviews are finished and eminent domain issues settled, [America's] lines will be built. Meanwhile, IBM opened its new global high-speed-rail innovation center last month.
In Beijing.

Rail Growth = Economic Growth
The infrastructure spending appears to be driving surprise growth in China’s economy. The country’s second-quarter growth, at 7.9%, beat expectations, while economists at Goldman Sachs expect China’s growth this year will exceed Beijing’s estimate of 8.1%. Despite slowing exports from the global downturn, China’s overall steel production capacity has increased by 10% to 12% over a year ago.
There’s no doubt that “the acceleration of [the massive railroad build-out] is playing a key role in China’s recovery,” says David Li, an economist at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

In May we cited a piece at Infrastructurist arguing that a serious investment in high-speed rail in the U.S. could provide as many if not more jobs than the country’s auto industry.

And, as Andy Kunz told us recently, a serious high-speed rail network could significantly cut American carbon emissions, boost technology and help wean us off of foreign oil.
Why is China So Good at This?
As with China’s push to become the world leader in electric cars and hybrids, the country’s command economy management means that big projects can get going faster than they might under a clunky American bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector provides more than enough steel and concrete. But China’s infrastructure success also rests on the early start it got: the rail build-up began in 2005, meaning projects were “shovel-ready” by the time recession hit.

The U.S. meanwhile is still looking for its shovel.