Carbon Emissions: Bus Fleets

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency inspects annually and on a random basis all types of bus and coach to make sure they comply with the correct standards. One of those standards is no leakage from the exhaust. I will take away the point that the noble Baroness raises about carbon monoxide monitoring to check that it is being considered across the country and write to her on it.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, on hydrogen-powered buses, when TfL put the hydrogen fuelling infrastructure into a single depot to run hydrogen buses in London, it turned out to be a very expensive undertaking. The Government have offered no estimate of what it will cost to achieve such a conversion, particularly in relation to hydrogen. Does the Minister ever reflect that persons on modest incomes might have preferred this money to have been spent on maintaining the bus fare cap at £2 rather than increasing it by 50%?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord is as knowledgeable about the original hydrogen fuel cell installation in London as I am, because it was under my control that it was put in. Of course, the truth is that an installation for three vehicles out of a fleet of 8,000 would proportionately be enormously expensive, but it was there for a reason: to experiment with hydrogen fuel cells. The result has been generational change in fuel cells for vehicles. The Government believe that, in appropriate circumstances, hydrogen is one way of getting zero emissions. We do not get technical progress without experimentation; we expect the cost to decline. That, together with electricity, will be the way of producing zero-emission buses and bus fares at reasonable prices.