Halifax Transit exploring alternative fuels for bus fleet

As the municipality seeks to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, Halifax Transit is exploring fuel alternatives to dieselto power its bus fleet.

The Halifax Regional Municipalityissued a tender on Wednesday for reports that will outline options, including the cost, driving range and estimated greenhouse gas emissions for each technology.

The reports will include "all available bus technologies," but the tender specifically requests information about powering vehicles with:

• Compressed natural gas.
• Renewable natural gas.
• Diesel gas.
• Battery-electric.
• Liquified natural gas.
• Hydrogen-fuel cell.
• Hybrid-electric diesel.
• Converted diesel to electric.
• Converted hybrid to electric.

Right now, 338 of Halifax's buses run on diesel and two are hybrid diesels.

Greenhouse gas target

Halifax has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2008 levels by 2020, but that target only encompassesenergy consumption for buildings, street lights and fleet vehicles not including Halifax Transit buses.

The documentnotes the municipality has made progress on that goal, but as the region "experiences particularly severe climate risks such as sea level rise, increasingly intense hurricanes, storm surges and coastal erosion, there is a need to accelerate the progress."

According to the tender, "tremendous opportunity exists to reduce HRM'sGHGs [greenhouse gases] by focusing on Halifax Transit's conventional bus fleet."

The final report, due at the end of February, will contain recommendations onwhich technologies the municipality should adopt and how those technologies should be implemented.

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