Skip to main content

Electric buses can ‘save millions’ for society and the environment

A city with half a million inhabitants would save about US$11.8 million per year if its buses ran on electricity instead of diesel, according to analysis conducted the Volvo Group and audit and advisory firm KPMG. The analysis has taken into consideration such factors as noise, travel time, emissions, energy use, taxes and the use of natural resources. The analysis was based on a city with about half a million inhabitants and 400 buses. If the buses were run on electricity instead of diesel, the total an
September 29, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
A city with half a million inhabitants would save about US$11.8 million per year if its buses ran on electricity instead of diesel, according to analysis conducted the 609 Volvo Group and audit and advisory firm 1981 KPMG. The analysis has taken into consideration such factors as noise, travel time, emissions, energy use, taxes and the use of natural resources.

The analysis was based on a city with about half a million inhabitants and 400 buses. If the buses were run on electricity instead of diesel, the total annualised societal saving would be about US$11.8 million. Among other areas, the savings stem from reduced noise and air pollution, which is estimated to lead to decreased care costs of up to US$2.8 million. The annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would total 33,000 tons, corresponding to about 3,000 Swedish households.

“Standard investment appraisals do not take into account all of the costs that impact society and the environment. Therefore, to quantify all of the aspects, we have now calculated the monetary value of an electric bus line,” says Niklas Gustafsson, head of Sustainability at the Volvo Group. “The results show that irrespective of the number of parameters taken into consideration, electric buses comprise the leading public transport solution.”

“Electric buses are an excellent example of an innovation that can create substantial societal values,” says Daniel Dellham, KPMG. “By supplementing standard financial analysis with socioeconomic and environmental factors, one arrives at a more complete picture of the investment’s impact on companies and society.”

In June 2015, a new electric bus line was opened in Gothenburg with the aim of developing and testing new solutions for sustainable public transport in partnership with the Volvo Group and several partners from industry, research and society.

“The bus line is one of the most modern in the world and interest is incredibly high, not least due to the buses being completely silent and emission-free, and being run on electricity from wind and hydro power,” says Niklas Gustafsson. “But the innovation aspect primarily pertains to the complete transportation system. A system that we can now show meets society’s socioeconomic and environmental challenges.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • New clean diesel technology improving air quality and fuel efficiency, research finds
    July 29, 2016
    The introduction of more advanced diesel truck engines, innovative emissions control systems, and cleaner diesel fuel over the past decade have successfully resulted in major improvements in air quality and fuel efficiency, according to new research compiled by The Martec Group, a global technical marketing research firm, for the Diesel Technology Forum. The four million cleaner heavy-duty diesels introduced from 2007 through 2015 have saved US consumers: 29 million tonnes of C02; 7.5 million tonnes o
  • How Covid has impacted transportation
    May 2, 2022
    How have Covid-induced changes in transportation impacted health? And how can transport companies mitigate these effects? Soheil Sohrabi of S-Plus-M and Texas A&M University explains
  • Alternative fuel buses gaining significant traction
    April 25, 2012
    According to a recent report from Pike Research, the trend toward cleaner transit buses will continue over the next several years, and by 2015 the cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts that alternative fuel vehicles will represent more than 50 per cent of the 64,000 total transit buses that will be delivered worldwide during that year, up from 28 per cent of total bus deliveries in 2010.
  • ACE report: private sector and user-pay for English roads
    May 16, 2018
    It’s one minute to midnight for funding England’s roads, according to a timely new report - and the clock’s big hand is pointing to some form of user-pay solution, reports David Arminas. Is there any way out of future user-pay funding for England’s highway infrastructure? The answer is a resounding ‘no’, according to the recently-published report Funding Roads for the Future. The 25-page document by the London-based Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) calls for a radical rethink about how to