A new fleet of hydrogen double-decker buses will be rolled out across Aberdeen in the summer.

Aberdeen City Council confirmed today First Aberdeen will use the 15 buses on its most popular routes.

The vehicles will arrive in spring, with final testing and driver training scheduled ahead of the full launch in summer.

According to the council the buses will be mainly used on the number 19, Peterculter to Tillydrone route, with other vehicles also used on the X27, city centre to Aberdeen airport via dyce station route.

The £8.3 million project is funded by Aberdeen City Council, the Scottish Governement and the European Union, it equates to about £500,000 worth of investment per vehicle.

Refueling of the buses, which are said to be as efficient as electric vehicles, takes around 10 minutes.

Aberdeen City Council co-leader councillor Jenny Laing said: “Aberdeen is at the forefront of developing green technologies and our continued innovative commitment to hydrogen truly puts us on the global map.

“The new buses come with even better technology helping to tackle air pollution in the city and further makes Aberdeen an entrepreneurial and technological leader by pushing boundaries for hydrogen.

“We are really proud to be the world’s first city with hydrogen double-deckers and we look forward to seeing them on the city’s roads.”

David Phillips, operations director for First Aberdeen, said: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with Aberdeen City Council to deliver these state-of-the-art and ground-breaking new buses to the people of Aberdeen.

“We are in the process of adapting our depot to accommodate these environmentally friendly zero emission vehicles and are upskilling all our staff to accommodate this next generation of buses.

“It is a huge effort from all our staff to deliver this project, so we extremely proud to be a part of this project in helping the city to lead the way on the hydrogen journey.”

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Scotland’s Energy Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, said: “Scotland has some of the most ambitious emission reduction targets in the world so, in the years to come, I expect we will begin to see many more ‘greener and cleaner’ transport solutions like this begin to emerge.

“I’m proud that today’s announcement, which is a World first, has been made possible thanks in part to Scottish Government funding.

“We are currently undertaking a wide-ranging project to assess the potential for hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells for use in transport and heating across Scotland.

“Hydrogen could well play an important role in the energy transition that’s required in order to meet our 2045 net zero emissions target.”

The 15 buses will be built by Northern Ireland firm Wrightbus.

John McLeister, Wrightbus director for sales and business development, said: “This is the start of an exciting chapter for Wrightbus in Aberdeen which will be the first city to introduce this large deployment of fuel cell zero emission vehicles.

“We are thrilled at this opportunity to partner with First Aberdeen and Aberdeen City Council to deliver a green well to wheel zero emission solution which will also showcase the world’s first fuel cell electric double decker bus operation.”