Wheels in motion: Battery-powered buses and the road to zero transport emissions

In 2017, with the passing of the Climate Change Act, the Australian state of Victoria became one of the first jurisdictions in the world to enshrine an emissions target of net zero by 2050. While Victoria exceeded a milestone commitment to a 20% reduction of 2005’s emission levels by 2020, there remains a great deal more to be done to reach the target of 50% below 2005 levels by the end of 2030.

‘Greening transport’ will be crucial

Transport creates about a quarter of the state’s emissions, and is the fastest-growing pollution emitter. Moving a bus consumes more energy in 15 minutes than a home would in an entire day.

While it’s simple to consider the technological shift from one machine to another, with the latter running on renewables, buses are somewhat more complex than, say, lawnmowers.

Read more: Moving towards zero-emissions transport in a post-COVID-19 Australian economy

A “transport pledge” has therefore been made by Victoria’s transport minister that lays stipulated goals for several transport modes, one of which is buses.

The pledge includes significant commitments to zero-emission buses (ZEBs) – by 2025, all new public transport bus purchases within the state will be ZEBs, and by 2023, 400 ZEBs will be added to the Victorian fleet.

Transitioning to ZEBs, however, encompasses multiple systems and stakeholders. This article focuses on Victoria, and the near-term solution of battery-powered electric buses.

Although hydrogen fuel cells are evolving rapidly, within an Australian context, the mass rollout of hydrogen-based bus systems doesn’t quite yet have the scale.

We can simply replace one bus with another, right?

Sadly, no.

Converting buses to battery power isn’t the same as replacing petrol-powered lawnmowers with those that get plugged into a socket to be charged.

Thousands of lawnmowers wouldn’t need to be charged in one go – there isn’t a peak lawnmowing period to meet a set mowing timetable. In addition, if the lawnmowers ran out of charge and the whole lawn couldn’t be mowed, it wouldn’t mean that thousands of people were stranded and unable to fulfil their obligations.

A lawnmower doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands of dollars because the industry is only now beginning to gear up to produce them in scale, nor do new electricity sockets need fitting across a city at vast expense – they’re already there. Finally, you don’t just “plug in” a bus to a regular outlet – the charging equipment is sophisticated, extensive, and expensive.

Who pays?

Victorian buses are operated under contracts for set terms by private operators whose contract values and lengths would not allow them to pay back the cost of the equipment, or take the risk of buying it in bulk in the first place.

Their obligations are vastly more complex than mowing the lawns. Yet, if Victoria does fund all this equipment and it goes into a private operator’s depot, then what’s the state entitled to ask for in return?

It’s all a bit murky at the moment

The market can’t “just provide” without help from the state, as the market doesn’t exist as such – it needs commitments from the state to coalesce and formulate viable business models. And the state can’t move forward without assurances as to what the market can reliably deliver, and at what price. Catch 22.

Two actions might break the deadlock

The first is forming cross-functional, stakeholder, working groups.

Victoria can learn a great deal from the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC).

Within CUTRIC, federal and state government, infrastructure financiers, transport operators, bus and truck manufacturers, energy companies, and charging infrastructure firms come together to develop standards, and workable transition paths. Industry and academia can help facilitate these groups.

Second, developing whole-of-life cycle analytical models will assist the parties in the contract, supply and operational chain, to design a commercially, technically, and politically viable transition that manages risk, and allows for different rollout scenarios to be tested.

These need to work across both the transport and energy sectors.

Arguably leading the way here are the Europeans.

Modellers at the Chalmers University of Technology have gauged the impacts of the electrification of the transport sector on electricity systems by modelling different operational scenarios. Australia has an outstanding R&D and advisory sector and manufacturing base – we can develop platforms like this ourselves within the aforementioned working groups, using independent entities to drive standardisation.

By creating such forums, and developing analytical tools to gauge systemic impact, Victoria can ensure battery electric-powered buses roll out en masse and help us meet our emission reduction obligations in a commercially, operationally and sustainable manner. The grass can be greener on the other side of the fence, but first of all the mowers need a bump start.

This article was co-authored with Dr David Ashmore, Senior Associate, TSA Advisory, and Parry Serafim, head of Heavy Vehicle National Law, National Transport Commission.