​London’s New Weapon Against Pollution: Hydrogen Powered Buses

London is getting pretty serious on fighting pollution caused by the fleet of buses it uses in the city. Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London has stepped the action up by scheduling a trial run of a hydrogen powered double decker bus for next year.

The new hydrogen-cell powered model was unveiled by the Mayor at the bus summit held at the London city hall. Mr Khan also announced all single deck buses to move on to zero emission immediately and pledged to not purchase diesel powered double decker buses from 2018 onwards.

San Francisco, Cape Town, New York, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and five other cities have also nodded to phase out the process of procuring pure diesel buses by the end of 2020.

The hydrogen powered double decker bus has been developed by the Wrightbus, a UK based bus manufacturer. Mr Khan at the conference encouraged bus makers from around the world to develop a generation of buses that work on the zero emission principle and are economical in terms of money. He said, "I want London to become a world leader in hydrogen and electric bus technology."

Frank Jensen, Lord Mayor, Copenhagen, said, “I am pleased London and Copenhagen are joining forces in the important task of reducing air pollution, noise and climate change by committing to deploy zero emission buses in our cities." While Oslo’s Vice Mayor for environment and transport, Ms Lan Marie Nguyen Berg sounding positive about the announcements said, “Oslo stands with London as cities taking climate action. Zero emission buses are vital for the climate and better for our cities.”