UEMI in Madrid

Madrid, the capital of Spain, has nearly 3.2 million inhabitants. Madrid’s energy consumption amounts to approximately 5.5% of Spain’s total consumption, and the city’s GHG emissions comprise 5% of national totals. Madrid’s transport sector is responsible for 53% of direct emissions and 36% of total emissions. In the past 4 years, under the leadership of Manuela Carmena, the Municipality of Madrid implemented a series of measures that aimed at reducing the intensity of private motor vehicle traffic by promoting public transport and encouraging pedestrian and bicycle transport. Madrid aimed to reduce the use of conventional cars by introducing tax incentives for clean-energy vehicles and by gradually restricting access and parking for highly-polluting vehicles that included the creation of a ‘low emission zone’ (Madrid Central) in the city centre launched in November 2018. These were some of the measures included in the Air Quality and Climate Change Plan, known as Plan A, approved in 2017. However, the new elected mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, who took office in June 2019, has started his term with a car-oriented policy by which he already threatened to withdraw the Low-emissions Zone. A new plan, Madrid 360, has been developed to replace Plan A, targeting even more ambitious goals in terms of air pollution reduction, but with less restrictions for private cars. 

Given that by the end of 2020, Madrid will have 93 e-buses running in the city, measures to provide adequate and efficient charging will be needed. Five inductive charging points have already been implemented in the city and the buses to be purchased during 2019 will have the capability of off-board opportunity charging. Thus, the pilot will focus on the following measures: 
 
1) Development of software to monitor and control the power network for charging stations and e-buses, maximizing bus availability and operational efficiency.
 
2) Purchase and installation of 2 (two) inverted pantographs for opportunity charging with a modular design offering charging power of 150kW, 300kW, 450kW and 600kW, enabling charging times of 3-6 minutes using a low-cost and low-weight interface on the roof of the bus.
 
These will be the first inverted pantographs installed in the city. Besides increasing the power and thus the speed of each charge, the smart and wireless characteristics of this equipment, will increase the efficiency and safety of the charging process. 
 

At the local level, Madrid has introduced a series of incentives to encourage the acquisition of vehicles running on clean fuels. Since 2013, the Municipality of Madrid has granted between €2,000 and €10,000 per commercial vehicle replaced. This has enabled the replacement of over 2,000 taxis and over 650 commercial vehicles with electric equivalents. A new subsidy has been added in 2018 with the aim of promoting the purchase of private low-emission vehicles. It includes incentives of up to €5,500 for the purchase of an electric or fuel cell vehicle, and up to €2,500 in the case of biofuel. This plan also includes the installation of charging points for electric vehicles, in both public entities (municipalities) and private entities (companies, shopping centres and communities of owners), with an allocation of €1.5 million. Overall, since 2006, Madrid has allocated €124 million for this purpose, which has led to a joint investment of over €700 million, with more than 700,000 actions carried out, and has meant energy savings estimated at 240,000 tonnes of oil equivalent.

In terms of clean vehicles, since the early 2000s, Madrid, led by the Municipal Transport Enterprise (EMT), has been testing different types of electric and hybrid buses. Thus, it has made great progress in improving the environmental performance of its fleet: 83% of its bus fleet is clean, i.e., 65% GNC, 16% Diesel Euro V and hybrid, and 2% electric. In 2018, Madrid launched the city’s first entirely electric bus line, line 76, which currently runs with 5 fully electric buses charged by induction on a 14km route with 42 stops. The 5 buses that run on this line were retrofitted from hybrid CNG-buses into fully electric. At present, there are 46 e-buses running in the city with the goal of having 93 by the end of 2020. This is complemented by a fleet of over 2,000 pedelecs distributed across the 165 stations of BICIMAD, Madrid’s bike sharing system operated by EMT (Fernández Balaguer, 2019).

According to the Mobility Survey conducted in 2014, 13 million trips are carried out in 14.3 million stages every day in the Community of Madrid[1]. From the latter, 73% were done in motorised vehicles and 27% by non-motorised modes. It is worth noting that between 2004 and 2014 the share of NMT increased 2.5% (GFK, 2014). Despite the fact that the number of bike users have increased significantly in Madrid, reaching an estimate of 60,000 - 80,000 trips per day, in the overall figures it’s use is still negligible with 0.7% - 0.9% of the total trips (gea21, 2016).
 
When it comes to motorised transport, the public/private distribution, expressed in stages, reverses the trend of the last survey, with a decrease in the participation of public transport, with a weight of 46.2% in 2014 compared to 53.2% in 2004. However, this varies depending on the area being considered. Figure 1 shows the trips conducted within and between the different areas (city (turquoise) – metropolitan area (yellow) – community (pink) – beyond), divided by public (red) and private (blue) transport. It can be observed that the lion share of trips corresponds to the ones occurring within the city (3.8 million). Despite the fact that between 2004 and 2014 the participation of public transport decreased from 62% to 60%, it is the only area where public transport dominates (GFK, 2014).  


[1] The Autonomous Community of Madrid is conformed by 179 municipalities, one of which is Madrid and 51 make the Metropolitan Area of Madrid. The total population of the Community in 2014 was 6.5 million, 93% of which is contained in the Metropolitan Area and 50% in the Madrid Municipality (GFK, 2014).

Hamburg´s special situation as being a city-state gives the city more competences, planning capacities and a different budget than there is usually on the local level (e.g. in Hamburg there is no distinction between the federal state budget and the city´s budget). This might be one of the reasons why it has been quite successful in implementing activities to transform urban mobility towards a more sustainable one.

As to e-mobility, from 2020, the two public bus transport providers, HOCHBAHN and VHH, will only purchase emission-free buses (BMVI 2018). Hamburg Hochbahn, the main public transport provider (see also below in more detail), has set the goal to have integrated 60 electric buses into the fleet in 2020 and by 2030, the entire HOCHBAHN fleet of around 1,000 buses is to be converted to emission-free drives (HOCHBAHN 2018). In November 2018 the first e-bus started operating in the city, and as of November 2019 there are now 30 e-buses running. A call for tender for 500 e-buses was published in August 2019. According to its own statements, Hochbahn is aiming for pro-rata federal funding for procurement of those buses (ibid.).