Tallinn not to revert to diesel buses despite gas price rise
While the price of gasoline has increased significantly, Tallinn City Transport Limited Company (TLT) says it is not planning to use more diesel buses or thin out the schedule. The city authority says it will cover the increased fuel price from its reserves.
TLT has set 2025 as the deadline to completely remove diesel buses from usage and so far, 200 compressed gas buses have been purchased with another 150 buses due.
The natural gas price has, however, exceeded the €140 limit, while a price fall is not forecast.
So far, TLT has covered the price increase reserves. The company isn't planning to boost the number diesel buses on its lines.
"There is no way back to diesel buses. Our company and the city's public transport strategy stipulates transition to environmentally friendly fuels, which in 2035 will be electricity and hydrogen according to the European directives," TLT's public relations manager Olga Polienko said.
Bus schedules won't be reduced. "According to the deputy mayor's words, the volume of regular traffic will be increased by five percent in 2022, and the schedules will not be reduced," Polienko said.
Polienko noted that even though in creating the next year's budget, new inputs have been taken into account, if the situation continues, it is planned to turn to the city of Tallinn.
As a domestic consumer of biogas, it is seen that an increase or even decrease in prices could be brought about by an increase in local biogas production volumes.
"It is important for us to increase local biogas production volumes, which in turn could lead to lower prices. Although developers are ready to invest and create new production facilities, the domestic biomethane industry is unfortunately not yet able to meet the explosive growth in demand," Polienko said.
Polienko noted that despite the electricity and gas prices hike, the transition to pure fossil fuels is important. "For this, domestic production of renewable energy needs to be favored - both biomethane and green electricity because only in this way, there will be enough energy for all market parties at reasonable terms," she said.
According to the current plan, the use of gas buses is only an intermediate step to shift all public transport in the capital to emission-free technologies by 2035 at the latest.
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Editor: Roberta Vaino
