Your say / Climate
‘Electric vehicles are a key part of decarbonising Bristol City Council’
Bristol City Council is making strides in helping residents switch to cleaner, more reliable electric vehicles in the city.
We are supporting various public charging options, including an expanded and refreshed network of public sites and on street solutions, including suitable lamp posts and cross pavement cable gulleys.
And for the first time, we’ve put in place a strategy to support these measures across the city and it’s coming to the Environment & Sustainability Committee, which I chair, to be debated and voted on in the near future.
At the same time, the government and the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) are also supporting the switch to electric vehicles (EVs) across major fleets like First Bus, which is now half electric.
But what about the council? Across all our services, we are gradually electrifying our own vehicles and putting in the necessary charging infrastructure.
As part of this, we recently sought £1m in grants to get depots that are used by council services ready for EV vans and trucks.
We’ve also been putting together the first EV fleet strategy for the council – one that helps to ensure a coherent approach that works across different services, vehicle types, uses and locations.
For example, housing staff operate all over the city but also have a tradition of basing vans at home overnight. As with other residents, many don’t live in homes where we can instal domestic EV charging, so we’re working with staff to come up with practical solutions.
However, the largest fleet is operated by the council-owned Bristol Waste company. It has 116 vehicles, mainly recycling and refuse collection vehicles, plus street sweeping and fly tipping collection trucks.
Bristol Waste has recently been trialling EVs and gaining experience in their operation, and the council has been working with them and fleet experts to come up with practical solutions for such a large fleet, which is made up of heavy vehicles which are out five or more days every week.
Most of the current fleet is nearing end of life and in the last year or more we’ve faced reliability problems, worn out parts and have increasingly needed urgent refurbishment to be able to deliver the service needed.
A thorough review has been carried out, and all members of my committee took part in a workshop last year to explore and clarify the urgent issues and what needs to be done.
As a result, we’ve created a new strategy for the replacement of the Bristol Waste fleet, which must be ordered long in advance. The current electricity supply to the main depot can only cope with six trucks for now, which have been ordered.
We’re also looking for a new depot for the company in the next few years where the grid is up to the task and has all the features we need for the fleet of the future.
We are also in the process of agreeing the up-to-date specifications for batches of new trucks that the service desperately needs that can easily be converted into EV vehicles in the future.
It’s frustrating that there isn’t an option to electrify the whole fleet right away. To be ready now, the plans would have to have been put in place several years ago by the previous Labour administration, which they weren’t.
But we can now at least commit to switching to EVs as soon as possible and are willing to invest more in vehicles we can convert soon.
EVs deliver up to 75 per cent lifecycle carbon reduction compared to diesel. So once this transformation is complete, Bristol will finally have an all-electric waste fleet that saves many tonnes of carbon a year and provides immediate air quality benefits in urban areas.
The whole new up-to-date fleet will also become far more reliable, and the configuration of recycling trucks will deliver the efficient recycling service I know the city wants and deserves.
This is an opinion piece by Martin Fodor, chair of Bristol City Council’s environment & sustainability policy committee
Main photo: Green Party
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