Electric Bus Fleet Targets: Jakarta

Overview

Electrifying vehicle fleets has the potential to fast-forward decarbonization of the transport sector.  Along those lines, a growing number of cities are setting ambitious goals to replace conventional buses with those powered by electricity.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, the city aims to have 10,000 electric buses in service by 2030. The public bus system Transjakarta has started the process, procuring 100 zero-emission buses to date. Jakarta has a population of over 10 million.

With a projected bus fleet of 12,000 by 2030, the city’s e-bus target would represent 83% of the total. Jakarta also wants to make sure that public transport accounts for 60% of all trips by 2029, up from 32% in 2019.

Transjakarta’s bus operators finance the buses and depot chargers, and the city pays them back at a fixed rate per kilometer of transit operation. Infrastructure for charging e-buses along routes was also introduced to support deployment, and the city’s total bus fleet has been expanded to help reduce traffic from private vehicles.

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Impact

Supporting the growth and decarbonization of public transport can improve urban accessibility and improve air quality, as well as create long-term jobs in construction, operations and maintenance. Transjakarta’s targets also create a signal for the adoption of green public transport. Policy makers can attract additional investment by setting such long-term targets and a plan for their delivery. For example, Jakarta has received U.K. international aid funding as a result of this program.

Jobs: The procurement of electric buses within a growing fleet has strong potential for job creation as routes are expanded, e.g. installing charge points and driving buses.

Emissions: The electrification of a bus fleet can directly lower tailpipe emissions from vehicles but must be coupled with measures to decarbonize the electricity grid itself.

Health: Electrification can reduce local air pollution levels.

Opportunity

Accelerating the deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure can reduce emissions from road transport directly through replacing vehicles with zero tailpipe emissions. When aligned with electrification of public transport, policy makers can also lower emissions indirectly through modal shifts, lowering the number of journeys taken by private cars.

Cities, national authorities and industry can collaborate on aligning job creation with national industrial priorities sectors targeted under labor market policy. Jakarta’s target for e-buses is strongly aligned to Indonesia’s goal for 20% of domestic vehicle production to be electric by 2025.

Jakarta’s experience also demonstrates that replacing 100% of buses on a designated route with zero-emission vehicles (rather than partial replacements on more routes) can make deployment easier.

Source

Source: BloombergNEF and C40 report, Building on Cities to Deliver a Green and Just Recovery