A key, recurring message to the Australian federal, state and territory governments is that buses are the easy part in the ongoing transition to zero-emissions fleets.
Bus Industry Confederation members already have fantastic battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell bus and coach models, and more are in the pipeline.
The difficult part relates to the provision of energy.
We’ve all heard the NSW Taskforce rumour about the 100-strong fleet of battery electric buses at one depot that only have the capacity to charge 50 buses, while 50 state-of-the-art zero-emissions buses sit idle in Sydney. Is this just a short term problem or a vision of what’s to come?
Without urgent government intervention and action from energy distributors, this could be our future.
Bus depots and other commercial fleets will become large consumers of energy once fully electrified. While the electrification end date for bus public transit routes is unknown as of yet, governments have aligned to transition to electric buses in earnest from 2025. When the transition gathers momentum, energy companies will need to produce more electrons or hydrogens for heavy vehicle fleets. Due to the quantum required, new power stations or other energy sources generating renewable energies (not coal nor gas) will be needed if the energy is to be green.
Using electricity as an example, after establishing the energy source comes the task of transporting the electrons to the bus depots. At present, new transmission towers, poles and wires are a contentious issue in many rural and regional communities. These are likely to become more so in our city suburbs and major towns, further complicating the process. The same can be said of hydrogen.
Grid upgrades will be necessary moving forward as our depots transform to run zero-emissions buses (battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell). Running our ZEB fleets will mean going from the garden hose of electrons that we currently use to run a diesel depot, to a fire hydrant. Eventually, we’ll need one in every depot across Australia.
There’s currently spare capacity for these upgrades across certain parts of our grid. However, this may not be the case for others in the area once the first one or two close-by depots are electrified. So, there’ll be enough for today, but not for the future.
Is the situation hopeless? Thankfully, not yet.
Governments must develop state- and territory-wide, long-term depot upgrade strategies to identify sites to be electrified first, based on energy availability and grid connection opportunities. Next, a feasibility study would show the potential order and locations requiring urgent action to upgrade the grid, plus associated transmission requirements.
We, the industry and governments, must collaborate with the distribution businesses to provide this fire hydrant of electrons. This will ensure the good outcomes we need when we need them. In turn, we’ll avoid the potentially embarrassing government outcome of significantly lagging grid upgrades just when electric buses arrive, as was the case in Sydney.
Collaboration must start now before the urgency worsens.
Recognising this, the Bus Industry Confederation Council set up the Energy and Infrastructure Group at the end of 2023. We also just began work on a Zero Emissions Bus Policy Position Paper aimed at clearly and concisely informing governments about how bus-specific transition issues may be addressed, ensuring an economically sustainable and technically successful transition of the industry to zero-emissions.