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Rail industry leaders have accused the Government of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds and undermining the environmental benefits of rail travel by choosing diesel instead of electric trains.

Iain Coucher, chief executive of Network Rail, has written to the Department for Transport, describing its failure to electrify more lines as “very short-sighted”.

In the letter, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times, he says Britain risks being left with an outmoded, inefficient and increasingly expensive railway because the Government has “bet on the wrong type of fuel”.

Britain is one of the only countries in the world that continues to use diesel to power high speed trains. Only 39 per cent of the network is electrified, one of the lowest proportions of any leading European country.

In July The Times disclosed that an industry study had found that modern diesel trains were emitting so much pollution that it would be greener to travel by car.

The Government is planning to spend £1 billion on a new fleet of diesel trains, which will begin trials in 2012, start carrying passengers in 2015 and remain in service until 2045. They will emit at least double the carbon dioxide emissions per mile of a standard electric train.

Mr Coucher, whose letter is also signed by Adrian Shooter, chairman of the Association of Train Operating Companies, says that the Government’s recent White Paper on rail uses “misleading” arguments to justify its failure to invest in wider electrification. The Government claimed that uncertainty over how energy would be generated in future, in particular how much would come from nuclear power, meant that it should defer a decision on electrification of the railways for another five years.

Mr Coucher writes: “Diesel trains consume significant amounts of energy to simply transport heavy engines and fuel around the network.

“It seems extraordinarily incautious to be spending millions of pounds equipping a railway to run on one type of fossil fuel, only to find we have bet on the wrong type of fuel. Fossil fuels are a limited resource. Using these to power trains seems very short-sighted.”

Network Rail has calculated that it would cost £800,000 per track mile to convert lines from diesel to electricity. It would cost £380 million to electrify the Great Western main line from London Paddington to Bristol. This compares with the extra £550 million that passengers paid in fares last year over the previous year. The other main line that would benefit from electrification is the Midland Mainline from London St Pancras to Sheffield.

Eurostar has been able to claim that it emits a tenth of the CO2 per passenger compared with flying from London to Paris because its trains are electric and half their energy is generated by French nuclear power stations.

The best-performing electric trains are operated by GNER between London and Edinburgh and emit only 40g of CO2 per passenger-kilometre (g/pkm) compared with 112g/pkm for diesel Voyager trains on cross country routes. By 2022 more efficient power generation will have reduced the emissions of the GNER trains to 28g/pkm. But the emissions of the Voyagers will be unchanged.

Ministers have admitted that some trains on rural lines, such as the diesel Sprinter, are less efficient than 4x4s because they are often almost empty. Douglas Alexander said last year when he was Transport Secretary: “If ten or fewer people travel in a Sprinter, it would be less environmentally damaging to give them each a Land Rover Freelander to drive.”In a reply to Mr Coucher, Mike Mitchell, the DfT’s rail director general, said: “It does not make sense to commit now to a very expensive national electrification programme which is not justified in an economic and business sense. We recognise that there may be advantages of further electrification on some routes.”

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