Croatia announces grants for electric bus charging stations

The tender aims to encourage public transport service providers to set up the infrastructure required for the use of zero-emission vehicles, i.e. charging stations for electric buses. The subsidised charging stations may only be used by the companies that receive the funding. That means the announced grants are reserved for private chargers, not public ones. The tender will begin on 17 February and end on 30 June.

According to the Croatian Ministry of Economy, its funding programme for electric bus charging stations complements another funding programme from the Croatian Ministry of Transport for the purchase of electric buses for public transport. However, it is not clear how the latter is structured.

In November, the Croatian capital Zagreb announced its intention to purchase electric buses for the first time following successful tests. Initially, two low-floor buses and two semi-low-floor buses are to be purchased. That doesn’t sound like much when you consider that there are around 150 bus routes in the city of 750,000 inhabitants. However, in addition to the already planned purchase of these four buses for two specific routes, the purchase of 70 more buses with electric and hydrogen drives is already in preparation, which should significantly accelerate the decarbonisation process of the public transport operator ZET.

seenews.com, mingo.gov.hr (in Croatian)