At the Entrevas Operations Center in Madrid, the Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid (EMT Madrid) announced that it has been awarded a total of €10.86 million for the drafting and execution of its project to build a hydroelectric plant and the required photovoltaic installation that will supply it.
Several green hydrogen refueling stations will be available at the new refueling station for the fleet of ten buses that EMT Madrid aims to buy during the project’s first phase. The project entails putting in place the required infrastructure for hydrogen production, storage, and delivery. Installation and commissioning of solar panels capable of providing all of the energy required for hydrogen generation from renewable sources are also included.
The tender also covers preventive and corrective maintenance of the facilities for a period of five years, in addition to the drafting and implementation. The project’s overall execution time will be 19 and a half months, with one and a half months for project drafting and 18 months for execution.
A total of €10.2 million will be committed to the project execution, approximately €238,000 to the project drafting, and over €369,000 to the maintenance service. This project is funded by the European Union, and EMT Madrid has been granted access to the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) for the first time, resulting in an additional €2.9 million in funding.
Through the CityCell and HyFleet: CUTE community programs, EMT Madrid has been a pioneer in the use of alternative fuels like hydrogen, and was the first Spanish transport operator to test the operation of hydrogen-powered fuel cell buses in 2002.
In 2020, the municipal firm reconsidered the benefits of hydrogen as a fuel and formed a strategic collaboration with the National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Center (CNH2) with the goal of advancing hydrogen technology research and deployment. The CNH2 is a national research space dedicated to hydrogen and fuel cell technology development.
This initiative will assist speed the decarbonization of the city’s public transportation fleet, in accordance with both the new EMT Madrid Strategic Plan, which will guide the organization’s course until 2025 and the Madrid 360 Environmental Strategy. To help achieve this, diesel-fueled vehicles will be phased out of the municipal fleet in December 2022, leaving only electric and natural gas buses.
