1 February

Transmission lines are vulnerable to extreme weather events, and everybody is getting a lot more of those. And it’s slow work building the 10,000km of new ones we need too. A really interesting proposal that’s now emerged is to use electric trains as mobile big batteries. They can move from town to town and also anywhere between them, carrying massive amounts of stored electricty. Some are even suggesting they could replace the need for new transmission lines. And act as emergency power for towns.