Decarbonizing Transport: The Case of Electric Buses

This workshop will discuss the development and challenges in electric buses and its uptake in public transportation systems. Several cities have announced ambitious goals for electrification of their bus fleet and adopted innovative business models to overcome challenges such as high upfront costs of electric buses. Experiences from these first movers shall be disseminated in order to identify key aspects when planning and procuring electric bus services.

The workshop will also introduce the TUMI E-Bus Mission project (joint project by C40, GIZ, ICLEI, ITDP, UITP, SLOCAT, WRI).

Speakers and attendees will engage on the following questions:

• How to shift new bus procurements in leading cities worldwide to zero-emission technologies? • What business models help to scale up the market for electric bus technologies?
• How to engage and create political commitment at the city level to promote electrification of public transport?
• What can other cities learn from cities that realized already large-scale tender processes for electric buses?
• What are the needs of the cities when planning, implementing and operating electric bus fleets?
• What instruments could help cities to tackle the challenges of electric bus implementation?
• How can we foster knowledge transfer and share best practices that will accelerate the transition to carbon-neutral mobility?
• In the transition towards electric buses, how could the public and private sectors work together to accelerate this process?
• What can cities do to attract public and private financing for electric bus fleets?

Speakers:

• Anthony Courreges, Clean Transport Finance Manager, C40 Cities: “Innovative business models for electric bus upscaling”
• Sofia Zamara, Transmilenio, Bogota, Colombia (tbc): “Experiences of the city of Bogotá on acquiring electric buses by tender”
• Laghu Parashar, GIZ India: “Training needs of cities for upscaling of electric bus operations”
• Facilitator: Jens Giersdorf, GIZ, TUMI Volt