HYPERLOOP

PROMISES
ULTRAFAST
TRANSPORTATION.
BUT WHAT DOES IT
MEAN FOR THE
ENVIRONMENT?
With launch anticipated as early as the
2020s, promoters are taking a closer look at
what the technology means for climate,
ecosystems and mineral resources.

Photo courtesy of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

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WRITER
Meredith Rutland
Bauer
@merebauer

Technology and
environment
reporter

REPUBLISH

December 12, 2018 — Deep in the heart of steel country on a balmy September
morning, Cleveland City Council members, professors and non-profit leaders
hopped out of their cars and Ubers and filed into a conference hall to find out why
an Ohio transportation agency had taken the unusual step of using public money
to pursue an experimental form of electric transportation: hyperloop.

Attendees to this transportation workshop were no stranger to new technologies,

especially innovations they hoped would make transportation faster and simpler.
The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) is part of a “smart
city” group already working on adding “internet of things” devices to traffic
signals, message signs and traffic cameras in Cleveland and the surrounding
region, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich broke ground on a self-driving car test facility
in Logan County in July.

But hyperloop was another level of innovation for this corner of the Great Lakes
region. The ultra-fast, electric-powered transportation technology, still in the
research and development stage, is expected by proponents to propel levitating
pods full of people and cargo at speeds of up to 750 miles (1,207 kilometers) per
hour in a vacuum tube between metropolises.

Bel Air billionaire and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk popularized the concept with a
2013 white paper that invigorated transportation-minded entrepreneurs. But
Musk didn’t lead the charge on hyperloop. Instead, it has been developed and
tested by high-tech engineers who joined new companies that were spun up by
Silicon Valley and Los Angeles entrepreneurs. Many of these early employees
previously spent their careers making spaceships and airplanes fly.
 Companies and governments have proposed dozens of hyperloop routes around the world. Click to see
complete infographic.

Much as air travel had a period of turbulence before the public could embrace it,
hyperloop will likely face its own growing pains, especially in the U.S. The
complications of regulating an industry that doesn’t neatly fit into an existing
transportation niche, questions of economic viability, pushback from media
commentators that hyperloop is more “hype” than reality, and uncertainty related
to insuring any high-speed transit could hinder the technology’s progress.

Despite the unknowns, NOACA partnered in February with Hyperloop

Transportation Technologies to map out a Cleveland-to-Chicago hyperloop route.
The agency spent US$600,000 on a feasibility study that includes a look at the
environmental impact of such a route, along with research on engineering
feasibility and public outreach. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
contributed about US$600,000 toward that study.

The Ohio agency is hardly alone in its choice to pursue hyperloop. At least 15
routes are proposed for the U.S., and several companies are planning dozens of
routes internationally. Virgin Hyperloop One announced results of the nation’s
first hyperloop feasibility study in October for a Missouri route, and the company
announced it is also involved in a US$2.5 million environmental impact study for
a route to connect Chicago, Columbus and Pittsburgh.

he biggest questions surrounding hyperloop’s environmental impact are its

ffect on carbon dioxide emissions, the effect of infrastructure on ecosystems,
nd the environmental footprint of the materials used to build it.

Hyperloop supporters claim multiple benefits for the technology. As it moves

closer to fruition, with companies aiming to have systems ready for people and
cargo in the 2020s, this is a good time to ask: How will hyperloop routes affect the
environment?

The biggest questions surrounding hyperloop’s environmental impact are its

effect on carbon dioxide emissions, the effect of infrastructure on ecosystems, and
the environmental footprint of the materials used to build it. Other concerns
include noise pollution and how to repurpose hyperloop tubes and tunnels at the
end of their lifespan.

Energy and Climate Edge

Steve Carden, transport innovation lead at PA Consulting Group in the United

Kingdom, wrote in a blog post for Los Angeles–based Virgin Hyperloop One in
2017 that the vacuum environment will give hyperloop an energy edge over other
forms of transportation.

As this entry from the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition shows, tubes and capsules are designed to boost
energy efficiency by minimizing drag. Photo courtesy of SpaceX Hyperloop, from Flickr, licensed under CC
BY-NC-ND 2.0

“The challenges of electrification [of transportation] are not insignificant,

especially in long distance, high-speed travel. Yet, this is where hyperloop has the
potential to be a game changer. Imagine traveling at the speed of a jet plane, with
the grid distribution efficiency of a train, and almost no aerodynamic drag,” he
wrote.

Virgin Hyperloop One estimates worldwide flights alone produced 859 million
metric tons (946 million tons) of CO2 in 2017. The company estimates it would be
possible to reduce fossil fuel emissions from flying by 58 percent if every
passenger flight between 500 kilometers and 1,500 kilometers (about 310 miles
and 930 miles) worldwide were replaced with hyperloop run off renewable
electricity, says Virgin Hyperloop One spokesperson Marcia Christoff.
 The goal, says Kristen Hammer, materials engineering manager at Virgin
Hyperloop One, is to run hyperloop exclusively on renewable electricity.

There’s no world in where we have to cause pollution. It can be run off of all
orts of sustainable energy.” – Kristen Hammer

“We don’t want to be chugging smoke into the air or causing pollution,” she says.
“There’s no world in where we have to cause pollution. It can be run off of all sorts
of sustainable energy.”

Jacqueline Jenkins, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at

Cleveland State University, says renewable energy will have to be an essential part
of any new regional transportation system if it’s going to be worth investing any
public funding. She says new systems have to be built not only for today’s transit
needs, but also to address climate concerns.

“If we don’t do it sustainably, it’s probably a short-term solution,” she says.

Technical University of Munich student Gabriele Semino, team manager for his
university’s team in the SpaceX semi-annual hyperloop pod competition, says
young engineers aren’t even considering fossil fuels as an option when designing
their systems. The university’s team, formerly called WARR Hyperloop but now
renamed to TUM Hyperloop, currently holds the competition’s speed record of
284 miles per hour (457 kilometers per hour). Some students from various teams
have gone to spin off their own hyperloop companies, while others have been
hired by larger hyperloop and space-focused organizations.

“We always want your system to be efficient. We’re at a point in time where
everyone in some way or another is focused on being cleaner and more efficient,”
says Semino, who is pursuing a graduate degree in physics. “We know the
problems burning fossil fuels are generating.”
Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, based in Culver
City, California, says solar panels could be placed along hyperloop tubes or
elevated routes. He says his company plans to find ways to add in renewable
energy wherever possible, such as using the speeding train to produce energy
through regenerative braking and adding wind turbines on unused land. The goal,
he says, is to produce more energy than needed so the system can feed electricity
back into nearby grids.

Minimizing the Footprint

Hyperloop systems will include a hollow tube with a roughly 30-meter-long pod
inside, and the tube will be held in the air on concrete columns. According to
Ahlborn, these routes will run linearly between cities and end at stations, where
engineers envision pods arriving and leaving every minute or so.

Several hyperloop companies are considering ways to build elevated tracks in

highway medians and next to existing railroad tracks to minimize the impact
construction might have on ecosystems and natural spaces, Hammer says.
Plans to elevate hyperloop tubes and co-locate them with roadways could help minimize adverse impacts on
land and wildlife. Photo courtesy of Hyperloop One

Hyperloop tubes between cities will likely stand dozens of feet above the ground
on pylons to avoid interfering with power lines or highway overpasses, she says.
Since hyperloop is mostly building upward, it can double up on land that’s already
being used for other purposes, such as highway medians or abandoned canals.

“If we’re elevated on columns, we’re not really taking up land space, necessarily,”
Hammer says. “From a wildlife aspect, we don’t have wildlife trying to cross a
freeway or cross a railway because they can go under it.”

However, in cities, tunneling will likely be necessary because building a tube into
an urban center would cause social problems by requiring the company to knock
down existing infrastructure to make room, she says.

Tunneling opens up a host of environmental questions. Tim Lipman, co-director

of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at University of California,
Berkeley, says environmental impact reports will address questions about ground
stability, the effect of tunneling on aquifers and whether there are any hazardous
chemicals that could leach and spread when the ground is agitated. Hammer said
Virgin Hyperloop One’s tunneling team is working on those considerations as the
company moves forward.

Musk’s The Boring Company aims to build a tunnel between New York City and
Washington, D.C., for a hyperloop route or an automatic car-moving system the
company has dubbed “loop.” Currently, the company only has authorization to
begin construction on a D.C. building that could become a hyperloop station. The
Boring Company did not respond to requests for comment on this piece.

Material Matters
The materials used to construct a hyperloop system are also a factor. A lightweight
pod will be suspended in the hyperloop tube, which has a near-vacuum
environment to cut down on air resistance. High-powered magnets arranged in a
special configuration keep the pod levitating, and a propulsion system at each
station gives the pods their initial “kick,” with boosters helping as needed along
the way. Batteries positioned at propulsion sites would provide electricity at night
when solar panels aren’t making any juice.

Hammer said one challenge will be

sourcing magnets from ethical and One challenge will be
environmentally sustainable sources. The sourcing magnets from
powerful magnets hyperloop uses require ethical and environmentally
traces of rare-earth elements. Some strong
sustainable sources.
rare-earth magnets use neodymium or
samarium, which are significantly more
powerful but more expensive than other permanent magnets made from iron ore,
cobalt and nickle. Cobalt, which is combined with samarium to create a
supermagnet, presents its own challenges given that cobalt mining relies on child
labor, according to reports by UNICEF and Amnesty International. Mining is also
suspected to have serious environmental and health consequences for those
miners.

Access to the materials for better, stronger batteries will be critical for hyperloop’s
success — at least if it’s going to run completely off renewable energy, Ahlborn
says. Lithium-ion batteries have been declining in price and increasing in capacity
over the past decade, and the global market for lithium-ion storage units is
predicted to increase by 12.1 percent from 2018 to 2024, according to a recent
report from Infinium Global Research. Yet lithium itself comes with
environmental challenges that the renewables industry is beginning to
acknowledge.

Ahlborn said the concrete needed to construct the hyperloop infrastructure poses
another environmental challenge. Concrete will likely be used for the pylons that
hold up hyperloop tubes, as well as hyperloop stations, parking garages and other
run-of-the-mill infrastructure.

“But you have to look into this,” he says. “We question literally everything. … You
have to think about how you construct, how you build, how materials are
constructed, are there alternatives to concrete? We all have a responsibility
because we’re here for a limited amount of time. Sustainability has to be a part of
our daily lives.”

A request to Hyperloop Transportation Technologies to get more information on

the sourcing for the proprietary composite material for its pods — a carbon fiber
 material that the company claims is stronger than steel alternatives and
aluminum — wasn’t returned by press time.

Noise and More

Noise is another potential concern. However, tests of early-stage pods by

companies and student enthusiasts suggest a hyperloop system would make less
noise than a highway. In fact, when the first hyperloop pods ran in a semiannual
student competition held by SpaceX on a half-size system in Los Angeles in 2017,
the pod’s “woosh” sound was dampened by the surrounding tube, then drowned
out by cheers.

ammer said her team is working on figuring out how to design hyperloop
ubes and systems so they don’t degrade and become the next generation’s
bandoned rail lines.

Regarding long-term materials management, Hammer said her team is working

on figuring out how to design hyperloop tubes and systems so they don’t degrade
and become the next generation’s abandoned rail lines. “We’re not just here to
build this cool thing and throw it out in the world,” she says. “We’re trying to
design our system so that it ages gracefully.”

The two largest players in the hyperloop space, Virgin Hyperloop One and
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, say they’re creating sustainability
procedures for their routes, such as limiting the amount of demolition needed and
using existing infrastructure and rights-of-way when possible. While details about
which federal agency will regulate hyperloop in the U.S. are still being
determined, several environmental impact reports are going forward to determine
whether proposed projects will violate local, state or federal environmental laws
and assess other impacts to cities, agriculture, ecosystems or watersheds, says
UC-Berkeley’s Lipman.

He added any environmental impact reports completed on prospective hyperloop

routes will vary in depth depending on whether the project is state funded or
federal dollars are involved. For example, an impact study done on a federally
funded project must include notes about Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act
requirements, whereas some regionally funded projects might not look
specifically into those laws. An environmental impact study provides guidance
about how to avoid such issues or minimize them, and it also provides the public
with information about potential risks a project might pose.

Back to the Future

Back in Cleveland, Ahlborn used his keynote speech to address the concerns
plastered on attendees’ faces. Was hyperloop scientifically possible? How could it
be profitable? And why should a region invest in an undeveloped technology when
their existing transportation systems need upgrades?

“There’s actually no rail, no major one in

the world, that is profitable. They all rely “If someone says something
heavily on government subsidies,” he told can’t be done, it just means
the crowd of about 350 people. Hyperloop, they haven’t figured out how
he said, would be different. “If someone
to do it yet.”
says something can’t be done, it just
means they haven’t figured out how to do
it yet.”

Grace Gallucci, executive director of NOACA, says while she believes hyperloop
will be an environmentally sustainable option, it’ll be helpful to have information
on any negative environmental impacts to help avoid or mitigate them. She says
the transportation sector as a whole seems intrigued by the lure of hyperloop’s
Jetson-like image of the future, but few groups have been willing to take the
financial leap because the technology hasn’t been tried commercially yet — an
early adopter’s catch-22. She’s hoping the Great Lakes area will get an economic
boost by taking that chance, but only if the region can do it in an environmentally
friendly and socially equitable way. The agency’s feasibility study is expected to be
completed by an independent analysis firm in early 2019.

“A lot of this is new to us,” she says, “and we don’t really have answers.”

UPDATED 12.14.18: The contributions of NOACA and HTT to study a Cleveland-

to-Chicago hyperloop route were updated to US$600,000 each.

Envision 2050: The Are self-driving vehicles Envision 2050: The

future of transportation good for the future of cities
environment?
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Add Your Comments

Mark Ritchie
Dec. 18th, 2018
Minnesota USA Expo, Minnesota's bid to host a World's Fair on
health and wellness, is part of this Great Lakes Hyperloop
Consortium and working to bring ultra-high-speed rail to the
Minnesota Expo by the summer of 2027.

Joan Halgren
Dec. 18th, 2018
Hyperloop has great potential to
mitigate damage to the environment and protect animals; plus,
being made from
less toxic materials. But my concern is how this type of travel
impacts one's health? I would want an answer to that before
seeing cities jump into this configuration. May be it is quite okay
to travel at high speeds in a tube! Guess we'll know when we
know.