The Rail-Grid Collaboration (RGC) is a non-profit founded to promote and enable technical collaboration, joint action, research and mutual goal setting in pursuit of investment in (1) efficient, safe, and high-performing North America freight and passenger rail operations and related supply chains; and (2) an integrated, resilient, secure and economical electric transmission grid. It succeeds the Rail Electrification Council.
RGC targets the respective and shared need for growth and sustainability of North America’s two most critical infrastructure networks. RGC believes that industrial policy, technology change and greater operational flexibility and even profitability will be driven by enhanced collaboration, joint action and partnerships between and within these industry networks and with policymakers at all levels of government, including bi-national interactions.
Only RGC is dedicated to helping railroads and electric power mutually develop knowledge and strategies that produce real results. While electric system owners, operators, investors and planners are readying the system for a monumental surge in energy demand and deployment of new or updated infrastructure, freight and passenger transport operators and stakeholders are exploring expansion and upgrade of systems, fleets, fuels, including sustained market share, commercial advantage, and opportunities for growth and improved asset utilization.
What Needs to Happen
Where commercial opportunities, let’s pursue direct (and private, where necessary) negotiations about individual, limited-term commercial arrangements or specific transactions, projects, or outcomes the parties can achieve. RGC accounts for investor and market demands, operational concerns, structural barriers and information deficits, resource and technology needs, and the opportunities and the historical position that rail holds in the marketplace.
Where public policy opportunities or problems exist, the electric and railroad industries can utilize RGC to pursue project or policy objectives, meet the demands of public policy and employ an understanding of federal, state and local laws and processes as a tool of public advocacy. RGC is reaching out to energy regulators and planners, state rail planners and funding programs to identify and seize benefits for all classes of rail and grid participants.
A classic example of joint problem-solving involves co-location of electric transmission lines and cables within railroad and other transportation rights-of-way as a contribution to both strengthening the national electrical grid, decarbonizing railroad system components, and accelerating operational innovation through catenary, energy storage, and other applications.
Best industry intelligence serves policymakers, and RGC participants and stakeholders require timely policy input. Because the services and benefits of electric grid and rail transport operations are economy-wide and impact states, markets and small communities in diverse regions of the country, RGC will develop capabilities to identify trends and developments among industrial strategies, regional transmission plans, state and national rail plans and state integrated resource plans, where future projects are planned for funding and development.
Access to Data: Where a paucity of commercial, industrial or technological data or significant barriers to economic development exists, new research and data collection will assist decision making by industry and public interests. Grid and rail expansion require better information on railroad rights-of-way, system requirements, energy demand, system interconnection and more coordinated state siting requirements, that can address the drag on new projects, such as the co-location of charging facilities, electric generation and transmission facilities or data centers within transportation geospatial assets.
Fresh start: Major research projects, long absent from rail infrastructure planning, can stimulate new economic activity. The Federal Railroad Administration’s recent study, “Cost and Benefit Framework for Modern Railway Electrification Options” (download below; or access the Railway Age feature article here), together with new industry experience co-locating rail and electric facilities, demonstrate the feasibility of deploying more efficient electric generation and transmission resources for locomotive power, ways to identify the cost and benefits of overcoming uneconomic barriers, methods of reducing costs, development timelines and transmission co-location operational risks . Rail system electrification, starting with components (e.g., switchyards, substations, branch lines) is necessarily “incremental.’
How We Make It Happen
Who We Need
Our Message
Join us. Rail operators and stakeholders and electric investors and transmission developers should commit, even if tentatively at first, to support RGC’s collaborative objectives and contribute to its operations and discussions about a pathway to the future(s) of North American infrastructure.
Getting to “yes”: Whether through innovative commercial transactions, collaboration with the energy industry, new technologies and taxpayer-funded support and incentives, or with evolving public policy, railroads (like other transport modes) can enter a period of growth and expansion by developing the capability to move toward more reliable, lower-carbon motive power resources, and helping promote electric grid development, and by seizing opportunities to compete with other transport modes and electricity suppliers in the North American market. Tell RGC how you would move the process! There’s not a minute to lose.
Personnel and Contact Information
RCG is currently administered and advised by a former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a season railroad expert and union representative, a veteran professor of railroad engineering in the U.S. and Europe, a corporate officer of a U.S. short line railroad, an industry leader of a national association of electrical manufacturers, a national expert in electric utility operations, a specialist in electric grid planning and operations, and a veteran in energy communications. RGC is supported by former Rail Electrification Council members as well. For more information, contact James Hoecker at Jim@HoeckerEnergy.com or James.Hoecker@Huschblackwell.com, 540-549-0584.
