As of 1 January 2020, all 64 of the buses travelling on the urban lines of Tartu, the second-largest town in Estonia, are powered by renewable fuel, biomethane – or “green gas”.
According to the Tartu officials, it is one of the few medium-sized towns in Europe where its entire public transportation system has been converted to operate on renewable fuel.
The deputy mayor of Tartu, Raimond Tamm, said in a statement that the town’s goal is to reduce the environmental impact resulting from transportation.
The biomethane is supplied by the Estonian energy company, Alexela, whose chairman of the management board, Aivo Adamson, said there was no “better alternative to biomethane in the transport sector today”.
“Biomethane is also made unique by the fact that it is produced locally in Estonia. This way, we are able to use the locally produced renewable fuel to reduce the volume of imported liquid fuels, keep jobs in Estonia and support rural areas,” he added.
The adoption of biomethane by Tartu’s urban line buses is supported by the Environmental Investment Centre with €2.2 million from the European Union’s Cohesion Fund.
Cover: All Tartu’s urban buses are now powered by biomethane (photo: Joonas Sisask).
