LowCVP to help OLEV in development of £30m Ultra Low Emission Bus Scheme

Tue 02 December 2014 View all news

The Office for Low Emission Vehicles has published preliminary guidance on the ultra low emission bus scheme for bus operators within England and Wales. The scheme, which the LowCVP will be helping to design, aims to increase the uptake of low and ultra low emission buses. 

The guidance offers information on the scheme's principles and current thinking around how the scheme will be designed (but not the final design of the scheme). The announcement is the beginning of a consultative process with those who have an interest.  LowCVP will be discussing further details at its Bus Working Group meeting on 15th Jan and supporting the DfT stakeholder workshop later that month. 

The scheme will aim to:

  • increase the uptake of low and ultra low emission buses, speeding up the full transition to an ultra low emission bus fleet
  • improve air quality in urban areas
  • encourage investment in the UK automotive industry

The Low Emission Bus scheme was announced in April 2014 and forms part of the £500 million package to grow the market for ultra low emission vehicles from 2015 to 2020. 

It will be open to local authorities and bus operators in England and Wales. Funding will be available both to offset the higher costs of low and ultra low emission buses and to support authorities and operators’ purchase of necessary infrastructure. OLEV has not ruled out any technologies, but expects to award relatively more funding for buses which can demonstrate greater emissions improvements. 

OLEV has a technology neutral approach for reducing emissions from road transport so all new low and ultra low emission buses and their related infrastructure will be eligible for funding, as long as they meet the scheme criteria. OLEV is working with the LowCVP to define exactly what these should be, and will present recommendations at a series of workshops in January 2015.  

The Low Emission Bus Scheme will build on the success of the Green Bus Fund, which the LowCVP also helped to design, and which ran from 2009-2013, delivering around 1,250 low emission buses onto England’s roads. This scheme will increase the level of ambition and ensure that local authorities and operators are supported in buying the lowest emission alternatives to conventional diesel buses.  

LowCVP comment: The current test regime for buses based on the London route 159 cycle, has been in use since 1996 and compares vehicles to the Euro III baseline from the early 2000s.   Recent research by the LowCVP (Barriers and opportunities to expand the low carbon bus market in the UK (Task 2)) called for a review of the test procedures and comparator together with changes to the grant and BSOG structures to stimulate the uptake of a range of low carbon bus technologies.  The opportunity to develop the OLEV scheme together with the current review of BSOG underway, enables a robust approach to be developed to support the bus community going forward.

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