Sheffield City council have announced that they will be pledging a fund of £11.5 million towards the transition to electric buses.
This is a part of the council’s wider city clean air plan, and will help the buses to comply with Sheffield’s Clean Air Zone (CAZ).
The CAZ has been in effect since 2023, and charges people to drive through it if they are in vehicles which do not meet certain emission standards, providing an incentive for the public to improve the city’s carbon footprint.
To assist people in improving their modes of transport, the Council’s Financial Assistance Scheme has provided over 1,750 vehicle grants, with a total of £6.9 million of CAZ grant funding paid out to assist people to upgrade their vehicles.
However, the bus retrofit programme was withdrawn, due to further national research into its performance, and the scheduled bus upgrade did not proceed as planned.
This has meant that the buses are not up to standard, and as a result, are one of the main contributors to areas which exceed the legal emission limits.
Working with Defra, DfT and the Joint Air Quality Unit (JAQU), the council have managed to secure approval towards a local Zero Emission Bus (ZEB) scheme.
Along with a £2.6m contribution from their Clean Air Investment Fund, this will create an £11.5m fund to accelerate the transition to electric buses in Sheffield.
The scheme will be looking to target areas with the worst air quality first, as they look to replace the old buses.
This bus upgrade has been promised to not only make them more environmentally friendly, but also to improve the general quality of buses for users.
The CAZ has been extremely successful in improving the environmental quality of vehicles across Sheffield, with all forms of transport seeing an improvement in complying with the Clean Air Zone area.