Question: Do you think other forms of electricity would be better to use on trains in the future?

Ryan Bakewell answered on 6 Mar 2016:

Well all electricity is the same, it’s only electrons flowing around a circuit at different speeds / energy levels. What I think you’re asking is whether different ways of generating electricity should be used to power our trains? If so….
As you may know most of our power is generated by coal today with only some generated by renewable sources or nuclear. There’s a really interesting website which tells you in real time the current electricity demand in the UK and what is generating that demand, have a look: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
When I checked it whilst writing this it was around 21% from coal, 16% from nuclear, 46% from gas and 2% from wind (the rest is made up of other sources / imports). This means that most of our energy generation is kicking out carbon in to the atmosphere. It would be much better if we could replace the coal & gas with renewables so this doesn’t happen. It would be much better than the environment and it would be sustainable. What I mean by sustainable is that it isn’t going to ‘run out’ in 10, 100, or 1000 years time!
So yes, if trains can run off wind / solar / tidal energy then we’d be travelling around without contributing to global warming and pollution.
As for Nuclear power generation… is it good or bad? I’ll let you have a think about that! (It’s an interesting one to google if you’re feeling brave!).