Zero-emission Buses and Air Quality in Sheffield

Clive Betts Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Robertson. This is a really important debate, because nitrogen dioxide is poisonous—particularly to children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) says. I congratulate him on raising this important issue.

I am pleased that Tinsley Meadows Primary School was built by Sheffield City Council, relocating the original school away from the motorway because the very high NO₂ levels there were damaging to children’s health. One of the worst problems is that in inner-city areas, poorer communities often live close to major arterial roads. The roads running into the city of Sheffield are the ones where we tend to get the highest levels of pollution, so it is those communities who suffer most.

A point that I particularly want to make—it was very helpful to have a lead-in from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for North Antrim (Ian Paisley)—is that the topography of Sheffield is very challenging for traditional electric vehicles. Because of the hills, their range is less than it would be in flatter topographies. Vehicles have to be recharged more often, and the work they can do to complete their route schedules is therefore not as good as it might be elsewhere.

We have the possibility of hydrogen, which tends to allow for a much longer range. Wrightbus in Northern Ireland is already producing hydrogen vehicles for London, Aberdeen, Belfast and Dublin, showing the way forward. Very conveniently, in my constituency we also have ITM Power, which is the leading research organisation for green hydrogen in this country and one of the leading organisations in Europe. It is a manufacturer of plant that can produce green hydrogen, and it is already exporting that plant around Europe. There is a logic to linking up the refuelling stations that ITM Power could build with hydrogen buses in a city such as Sheffield. There need to be a number of buses to make it economical and cost-effective to have hydrogen refuelling stations. Joined-up government, with different Departments working together, would be really interesting and important.

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fantastic point. That would join up the whole strategy of hydrogen production with a utility vehicle providing a public transport solution and clean air. At 11.30 am, the all-party parliamentary group for the bus and coach industry will be meeting in W2. I believe that the Minister and the shadow Minister will be there, and we hope to promote the joined-up strategy that is necessary for hydrogen tech to take off.

[Mr Betts]

I agree with the hon. Member about joining up. Indeed, the Minister can happily say good things about ITM Power and what the Government want to do, because the Government launched their hydrogen strategy nationally at ITM Power a couple of years ago. The Energy Secretary and the Chancellor have both recently been to visit ITM Power to show the Government’s support. It is well renowned, and it shows the way forward for green hydrogen. That is the way we should be moving.

I hope that the Minister will follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central in asking for more resources and more clean buses for Sheffield. When he is looking at new vehicles for Sheffield, I ask him seriously to look at the role that hydrogen buses can play and at how the Government can properly join this up.

ITM wants to play a role. It is happy to provide the refuelling capacity. It is happy to work with Government and bus companies. Let us have some joined-up thinking across Government and let us get things moving forward, not just for the clean air that we want for Sheffield, but as a major innovation and a major move forward for the use of hydrogen in buses in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

I will come to the hon. Member’s point. The retrofitting programme was only ever going to be an interim scheme, because those were the buses we had at that moment. As basically all other hon. Members have said, the ultimate long-term ambition is to go to zero-emission buses, for reasons of both climate change and air pollution. In the national bus strategy in 2020, the Government committed to 4,000 zero-emission buses; 1,600 of them are on the road at the moment. We have been pushing that in a variety of ways. We are also committed to announcing a date for the phasing out of non-zero-emission buses, which will be done in the near future.

There are two schemes for zero-emission buses at the moment. First, there was ZEBRA 1, which provided £270 million of funding. The beneficiaries included Sheffield, which got four buses, which will start in January, and the South Yorkshire metropolitan area, which got 27 zero-emission buses. We then opened ZEBRA 2. I know that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central wrote to one of my predecessors expressing interest from Sheffield in that scheme, and that Sheffield has lodged expressions of interest, which is great. The deadline is 15 December. I cannot announce the results, because the applications are not in yet.

On the request from the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), we want to act as quickly as possible. I will certainly urge officials to announce the outcomes of the bid as quickly as possible because, as I said, we want to act quickly for reasons of both climate change and air pollution.

Various hon. Members mentioned hydrogen buses. The UK Government are technologically neutral: we have been very careful to try not to say that one technology will work and another technology will not, not least because we do not know how technology is going to progress. There are also very varying conditions, and one type of technology might be better in one situation compared with another.

The hon. Members for Sheffield Central and for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) mentioned hills and the challenges they pose for battery buses. For longer ranges—there are buses in rural areas that have to go far longer distances—hydrogen buses may turn out to be more suitable than battery buses. However, I know that battery technology is advancing very rapidly. If we compare the debate now with a few years ago and five years ago, certainly from a manufacturer’s point of view, there is a lot more emphasis on batteries as the ultimate solution, rather than hydrogen. The price of batteries has dropped by 90% since 2010 and the range is increasing by about 10% a year—it has increased by about 45% over the last four years. Hopefully, those technological improvements will continue and help us to decarbonise all forms of transport in cost-effective ways.

We are supporting hydrogen. There are various Government programmes supporting hydrogen buses. The Government provided £30 million to support the West Midlands Combined Authority’s scheme for hydrogen buses, which are about to be launched there. The ultra-low and low-emission bus fund is supporting 20 hydrogen buses in Liverpool, and there are other hydrogen buses elsewhere. We will carry on supporting that, because hydrogen could end up being the absolutely appropriate technology for certain situations.

[Mr Betts]

rose—

[Anthony Browne]

I was going to talk about the point that the hon. Member raised about ITM production, but I will give way.

[Mr Betts]

I hope that the Minister will respond to this point as well. Given that the Government want to be technology-neutral, they ought to explore hydrogen as well as simple battery buses. Would Sheffield not be a very good place to expand their understanding of how hydrogen buses can work, because of the topography and ITM Power, and to try to roll out more hydrogen buses in a fleet, to see whether that delivers what everyone wants?