Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), on Thursday announced that it will deploy a total of 5,580 electric buses in major cities across India. This move comes as part of the government’s strategy to promote electric mobility for public transportation.
Dubbed as ‘Grand Challenge’, the move aims to deploy 5,450 single-decker and 130 double-decker electric buses. The cities such as Bangalore, Delhi, Surat, Hyderabad and Kolkata will be covered in the first phase of the program. CESL plans to deploy the first lot of electric buses by July 2022.
CESL has said in a release that through this initiative, it intends to enhance its support to state governments in achieving their electric mobility targets as well as further build an infrastructure for e-mobility in the country.
This is seen as a big step in the series of initiatives to achieve net-zero status by 2050 and get closer to achieving Energy Independence by 2047.
CESL also said that subsidised by the FAME-II scheme, this initiative will focus on reducing operating costs for cities, removing bottlenecks of procuring electric buses by State Transport Undertakings (STUs) and modernization of city bus fleets.
The agency has said that at later stages, it will expand support to more cities.
Speaking about this initiative, Mahua Acharya, MD and CEO of CESL, said that this Grand Challenge Tender represents efforts by STUs, OEMs, financiers, Niti Aayog, DHI. “This is the biggest ever scheme in the world – and is based on an innovative, asset-light model that makes it possible for STUs to deploy affordably and at scale,’’ she further said.
NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said that standardizing tendering conditions in diverse cities is a big step towards the transformation of public transport in India.
Source: auto.hindustantimes.com
