The number of electric buses operating in Ireland has more than doubled in the past year. When The Irish Times last asked the Department of Transport how many EV buses were in use – in October 2024 — the number was just 96.
Now, a year on, according to a Department spokesperson, there are “currently in excess of 200 battery-electric buses in use by Bus Átha Cliath – Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann across Ireland.”
That’s a big jump in just 12 months, and the effect on emissions is potentially profound. According to the Department: “Assuming a typical bus equipped with a diesel engine consumes 32,000 litres of diesel fuel annually, each battery-electric bus can prevent the release of approximately 86 tonnes of CO2 each year. This means that the battery-electric buses currently in use can reduce Ireland’s CO2 emissions by more than 17,000 tonnes per annum.”
Given that, even when they’re running on dirty old diesel, bus travel is more environmentally friendly than car travel, the rise of the electric bus is – pun fully intended – supercharging carbon savings.
RM Block
The Department of Transport also told The Irish Times that the ambition for EV bus travel doesn’t stop there: “It is intended that all of the buses in these cities, and indeed the remainder of the Public Service Obligation, or PSO, urban bus fleet, will be zero-emission by the middle of the next decade, with the majority of the fleet comprising battery-electric buses, depending on funding availability. The PSO urban bus fleet currently totals approximately 1,800 buses, primarily operating services within cities and towns, as well as routes serving outlying areas.”
If there’s a gap in the plan, then it’s when we turn to longer-haul services, such as those operated by the Expressway brand. “At present, battery-electric coaches are not capable of replacing diesel-powered coaches on a one-for-one basis for long-haul services, as their range on a single charge is significantly less than what a diesel coach can achieve on a full tank,” said the spokesperson. Even that may change soon, though. Volvo has just unveiled a long-distance electric coach design, with a 720 kWh battery that’s supposedly good for up to 700km of driving range.
Equally, electric power is already coming to rural bus services, so it wouldn’t be right to assume that all buses outside of city centres are still reliant on diesel. “Ireland has made significant progress in both improving, and electrifying, its public transport system, deploying a significant number of electric buses nationwide and launching policies like the Sustainable Mobility Policy and the Connecting Ireland Rural Mobility Plan, which is seeing a significant enhancement and improvement to Ireland’s rural bus network in particular – including many town bus services, which are also electrified, like Athlone,” says Yvonne McCarthy, head of sustainability research at AIB.
“AIB plays a key role in supporting electric transport through our green finance strategy, including our work within climate capital where there is a focus on electric transport and rail in particular,” she adds. “AIB also supports transport operators and infrastructure providers through large-scale project finance.”
One weakness we have as a nation, in terms of electric transport, is in terms of rail services. Yes, there’s the Luas and the Dart, both of which run on electricity, but those are entirely Dublin-centric and our inter-city routes still rely on diesel power. How fast can we turn that around, and indeed can our longer-haul trains ever go fully electric?
Yes, is the short answer, says the Department of Transport, although the full Project Prioritisation Strategy follow-on from last year’s All-Island Strategic Rail Review won’t be published until later this year, the Department spokesperson did say that decisions on: “elements of the DART+ Programme, Cork Area Commuter Rail and broader rail electrification projects and a decision on a programme of delivery within the available funding will be made in the coming months.”
Combined with the just-confirmed MetroLink, that will see the electrified proportion of Ireland’s rail services skyrocket in the coming years, if all goes to plan. Equally, the Department confirmed that the ESB has been engaged in these projects, and that “supply agreements are in place to support the current plans.”
Of course, this is all planning, and we all know too well how long MetroLink has been gestating, while even the much simpler Dart+, designed to electrify the train line between Malahide in north Co Dublin and Drogheda – has been spoken of as far back as 2004. Still, if we can double the number of EV buses on the roads in just one year, maybe Ireland’s public transport network, as a whole, can seriously start to make some electric strides.
