Thought I would start a new thread rather than adding this into the politics thread as I would hope that the fight against climate change spans the political spectrum and crosses international borders. I posted the other day (and again here) that Spain produced enough renewable energy to power the entire country for 9 hours.
This is an excellent idea and one that I applaud. For other countries to follow suit, it may require additional investment in the rail network, but would that be a bad thing ? I would love to see Spain adopt a similar strategy. We have an excellent High Speed rail service which should be able to cope with the additional demand.
I like that French idea, though I imagine only fully applicable in a handful of larger western European countries which already have established and affordable rail networks (whether pleasant experiences or not). I use the Italian network a lot and, even if it's not always bulletproof on reliabiity, crucially it's extensive and relatively cheap and I can travel a lot further for a lot less than it takes in Britain.
From Cardiff, I mostly have to fly from Bristol to Edinburgh when I visit family in Scotland, and there is no direct - or even semi-direct - route from Wales to Scotland, you need to take a couple of connecting trains, and it almost always costlier than planes and takes at least four or five times longer. Until we sort out those anomalies of connecting pretty big towns/cities at an affordable rate, we'd struggle to be in that sort of position to take this step in Britain.
