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This article was published 14/1/2017 (1342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Regardless of how prominent a position global warming may have in the news cycle of the day, there is no longer any doubt about the growing demand to eliminate emissions from transit buses

This week, Winnipeg-based New Flyer Industries, the largest bus maker in North America, disclosed that its shipments of zero-emission buses (ZEBs) in 2016 increased by 48 per cent over 2015.

Company and industry officials do not believe that kind of growth is an anomaly.

Chris Stoddart, New Flyer’s vice-president of engineering and customer service, said, "In the industry, we see demand for zero-emission buses increasing significantly."

New Flyer shipped 213 ZEBs in 2016, representing 8.3 per cent of its total shipments. Company estimates are that New Flyer was responsible for 83 per cent of all ZEBs shipped across the U.S. and Canada last year. That is a much larger market share than New Flyer holds in the total transit bus market, but company officials are well aware there is plenty of competition out there in the zero-emission bus field, including some start-ups and Chinese competitors.

"If you research globally, particularly Europe and North America, pretty much every major bus manufacturer has a strategy where they are starting to deploy electric buses — some are pure battery, some have full cells as range extenders," Stoddart said. "It is something that is happening globally."

New Flyer has a few different ZEB configurations, including battery-electric, trolley-electric and hydrogen-fuel-cell electric buses.

Two years ago, it began a pilot program testing a few battery-powered buses in service on the streets of Winnipeg. Part of the program was the installation of a high-power charging station at Winnipeg’s Richardson International Airport. The automated, roof-mounted charging process takes about 10 minutes while passengers load and unload at the airport terminal.

At the time, they were among only a few dozen buses with that type of propulsion system in service anywhere in North America. Their numbers have grown and the technology has now been proved out.

"New Flyer is at a pretty mature state when it comes to the development of battery-electric buses," Stoddart said. "We started (research and development) on battery-electric and pure-electric around 2011, so we’re coming into our sixth year. So if you ask if we are at the R & D, science project phase or the commercial phase, the answer is that we are well into the commercial phase."

A zero-emission transit bus is able to eliminate 1,690 tons of carbon dioxide over its 12-year lifespan, which is equivalent to taking 27 cars off the road for each ZEB, and will also eliminate about 10 tons of nitrogen oxides and 160 kilograms of particulate matter.

New Flyer will not estimate how many electric bus variants it expects to sell in 2017, but it’s clear the company has every intention of maintaining its industry-leading position as new ZEB variants take hold in the market.

"Our bid universe, or the potential for business (for ZEB models), is increasing, and we are very well-positioned to be competitive in that increasing demand," Stoddart said. "We definitely want to maintain the dominant position going forward."

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca