Capitalizing on opportunities, identifying levers, and overcoming obstacles to the decarbonization of Edmonton’s bus fleet

Sparse literature on BEB adoption, especially in winter cities, may disconnect academic discourse on transit electrification from on-the-ground realities. Relatedly, emission reduction calculations of BEB implementation are traditionally based on the assumption that an agency will utilize the fleet proportionally. In other words, if 10% of an agency’s fleet are BEBs, then the system-level emissions are assumed to decrease by 10%. Using data from 2022-2023 we will calculate the service kilometers of Edmonton’s fleet by vehicle type monthly. Operations data will then feed into monthly emissions reduction estimations to determine the environmental performance of BEB adoption during our study period. Through this work we expect to identify opportunities to further reduce emissions that point to operational factors (i.e. optimizing the use of BEBs), charging demand management (i.e. avoiding charging BEBs at peak times), and decarbonizing Alberta’s electricity.