A second tranche of ZEBRA funding for zero emission buses in England (outside of London) has been launched, with £129 million up for local authority bidding across the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years.
Introduction
In March 2021, the government published ’Bus Back Better’, its national bus strategy for England, which set out a vision for the future of buses across the country. The strategy set out a roadmap to transition towards a fully zero emission bus fleet. It committed to consulting on an end date for non-zero emission buses and reaffirmed the government’s commitment first made in February 2020 to support 4,000 zero emission buses.
Since then, an estimated 4,200 zero emission buses (ZEBs) have been funded across the United Kingdom, delivering on this commitment. We have also consulted on setting an end date for the sale of non-zero emission buses. Both these actions will support our long-term goal to decarbonise the whole bus fleet.
The Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas scheme (ZEBRA 1) provided funding for 1,300 ZEBs. This scheme supported the rollout of ZEBs, the development of ZEB technology and provided learning on the challenges of introducing ZEBs and their supporting infrastructure.
The ZEBRA 1 scheme demonstrated the importance of local transport authorities (LTAs) having the right knowledge and experience to deliver large ZEB projects and the importance of partnership working between LTAs and bus operators. It also demonstrated the additional challenges faced by rural LTAs seeking to introduce ZEBs, both technological and financial. If we are to decarbonise the whole bus fleet, we must ensure that all LTAs and all bus operators take the first step towards decarbonising buses.
We are now launching ZEBRA 2, which will provide £129 million to support the introduction of ZEBs in financial years 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025. This will be a single-stage funding competition to award funding over both financial years.
£25 million will be initially reserved for proposals to introduce ZEBs in rural areas, recognising the additional challenges this may bring. All applicants will also be able to seek funding for zero emission minibuses that are used on local bus services.
We want to help LTAs and bus operators that have little to no experience with ZEBs benefit from this funding. Therefore, LTAs that did not receive ZEBRA funding will be prioritised over LTAs that did.
For battery electric buses, reflecting the commercial maturity of the technology and evidence from ZEBRA 1, proposals seeking funding for battery electric buses will be required to demonstrate at least low value for money (VfM), as measured through our greener bus tool. This is a key requirement and battery electric proposals assessed to be poor VfM will not receive funding.
Hydrogen fuel cell buses are at an earlier stage of commercial deployment compared to battery electric buses and we know there is more that we need to understand about the technology. We recognise that hydrogen schemes would struggle to meet a low VfM threshold. Therefore, hydrogen fuel cell bus proposals that are assessed to be poor VfM could be funded, provided they offer a genuine learning and innovation opportunity, such as the vehicles will operate on longer distance bus routes in rural areas.
The funding of ZEBs cannot be considered in isolation. Since March 2020, we have provided over £2 billion funding to support bus industry. We want to ensure that funding for ZEBs is aligned with investment to support bus services. Therefore, in line with the principles set out in the NBS, funding will only be awarded to LTAs that have made an enhanced partnership or have begun following the statutory process to decide whether to implement franchising.
Last edited: