Biggest Danish cities to only buy electric buses from 2021

The six largest municipalities in Denmark will now procure only electric city buses from 2021. To this end, the cities of Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, Aalborg, Vejle and Frederiksberg have now signed the Climate Cooperation Agreement with the Danish Ministry of Transport.

The above-mentioned municipalities have now committed themselves to procure only emission-free buses from 2021, which of course includes both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell buses. According to the Ministry of Transport, the sextet accounts for about a quarter of all public bus transport. Of the 3,330 city buses in the country, about 800 operate in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, Aalborg, Vejle and Frederiksberg. “It is therefore quite natural that they should be the driving force behind the transformation of public transport,” comments Denmark’s Transport Minister Benny Engelbrecht on the agreement. Engelbrecht hopes that other cities in the country will join the initiative.

Copenhagen is already in the process of phasing out diesel city buses. Even before the current agreement, the capital of Denmark was already striving to order only purely electric city buses from 2025. The Nordic metropolis made the commitment with eleven other major cities from the C40 city network. Now the end of polluting city buses is coming into effect another four years earlier.

Copenhagen just announced in March that the first hydrogen fuel cell buses have been delivered and are starting operation. Copenhagen has also, like the Danish city of Odense, already managed to procure a significant number of battery-electric buses which are now in operation.

sustainable-bus.com, dr.dk, trm.dk (in Danish)