Carbon Emissions: Bus Fleets
Lord Kamall Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
My understanding is that, progressively, the production of zero-emission buses has resulted in vehicles that have more capability of working a full day. The experiment in Harrogate referred to earlier, which is about charging vehicles during the day, is one way of ensuring that the bus industry will have the opportunity in due course of replacing all diesel buses with electric buses. I cannot currently answer the question about when that will be, but I know that that experiment is one of a number of things that need to happen in order that vehicles can be purchased with confidence to do all the jobs that buses do in England, Wales and Scotland.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, I applaud the Minister for retrofitting one of his Routemasters with a more environmentally friendly engine. Given that, is he aware of any schemes to encourage bus companies to retrofit their existing stock of buses rather than scrapping them and having to buy new ones, given the environmental life cycle costs?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord refers to a vehicle built in 1962 that has Euro 6 emission standards. I have not yet quite got to the stage of fitting one of those vehicles with batteries, but you never know. The serious point here is that these vehicles last an average of 15 years, so taking steps for most or all new vehicles in the fleet to be zero emission is obviously the way of converting the entire fleet within a reasonable time.
MV “Ruby”: Ammonium Nitrate
Lord Kamall Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that it is my first maritime Question. I was not expecting to be so knowledgeable about ammonium nitrate 48 hours ago, but I am now and I welcome his information about the explosion in Beirut.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, can I just follow up the question from my noble friend Lord Moylan about the information given to local residents? It is a routine operation, as the Minister rightly says. But given the extended publicity around this particular transfer and this particular docking, it may well be that some local people who were not aware that this was routine are now alarmed. Can the Minister have another go at answering the question of whether there are any concerns, given the media coverage of this ship docking there?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
Given what the noble Lord has said, I will ask again, but I emphasise that as far as the port is concerned this is a routine activity and accounts for no more than removal of the cargo from one ship by means of lorries on the quayside and putting it in a second one.