Green buses for the UK to help improve air quality

Some £2.4 million worth of funding is to be invested into providing green public transport in the UK in a bid to improve air quality. The money will be put towards the purchase of low emission buses to reduce the carbon output in several key locations.

The Green Bus Fund will be used to buy 55 new low emission buses for public transportation in a bid to help improve air quality in city locations. Bus companies will be able to use the funding pot, which was announced by the Department for Transport (DfT), to purchase buses that use hybrid engines or are powered by biomethane gas.

As well as the new vehicles, £1 million is to be put towards retrofitting existing buses in areas throughout South Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, York, Kent and the West Midlands. Technology will be added to the buses to reduce the amount of emissions they produce, to further the work to improve air quality.

Funding for the alterations to the buses that are already in use is to be allocated through the Clean Bus Technology Fund, which has already helped to retrofit 400 buses this year throughout the UK with emissions reducing technology. These alterations were made through the allocation of £5 million of funding in August this year.    

Norman Baker, transport minister, who made the announcement, said: “This money will improve air quality in towns and cities across England and cut carbon, which is good for all of us wherever we live.

“Schemes like these are a cost-effective way of landing real benefits for the public and the environment. Cleaner, more efficient bus services are good for the economy and for the environment – it’s a win-win.”

Manchester and Sunderland will both be benefiting from 23 new, low emission buses, while Oxfordshire will be receiving two new vehicles. York is also to get seven new buses as well as a new pilot scheme that will see a former diesel bus converted to be run by electric propulsion. The West Midlands is to have 29 buses retrofitted, while Swale Borough and Chiltern District will both have five altered buses.