Image: © MarioGuti | iStockPeter Staelens, Eurocities Head of Mobility, looks at how cities could deliver Europe’s clean bus transition by 2028
A remarkable transition is taking place on Europe’s streets. In 2025, six out of ten new city buses registered across the European Union (EU) were zero-emission, according to data published by Transport and Environment.
Battery-electric buses accounted for 56% of the market and fuel-cell buses a further 4%, a dramatic increase from just 12% in 2019, when the EU’s Clean Vehicles Directive was first adopted.
The transition is moving faster than expected. Five EU Member States – Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia – recorded 100% zero-emission new city bus sales in 2025, with a further six countries exceeding 90%.
If recent growth rates continue, the EU could reach a fully zero-emission city bus market by 2028, seven years ahead of the 2035 legal deadline.
Behind these impressive figures lies another, less visible transformation. Electrifying a bus fleet is no longer simply a question of buying electric buses. Cities, transport authorities and operators are having to rethink how they procure, finance, operate and manage the infrastructure that makes zero-emission public transport possible.
This is where collective learning matters.
Explaining how collective learning matters
Over the past three years, Eurocities has brought together cities, transport authorities and other public buyers through the Community of Practice on Zero-Emission Bus Systems and Services, established under the European Commission’s Big Buyers Working Together initiative.
Our objective has been simple. No single city, however advanced, should have to solve every procurement puzzle alone.
From Stockholm to Rome, Utrecht to Madrid, Helsinki to London, public transport authorities struggle with the same questions: how to size a fleet, design a depot, structure a contract, and manage the risks of an investment that will shape a city’s mobility for the next decade. Pooling that experience is where the real acceleration can happen.
The experience of cities across Europe shows what is possible. Paris’ RATP public transport system now operates 1,000 e-buses and has pioneered new lifecycle-cost contract models that assess a vehicle’s total cost over its lifetime rather than focusing only on the initial purchase price. Rome’s ATAC is deploying 425 fully electric buses through a €250 million contract while electrifying four major depots with more than 330 charging points.
Utrecht, which piloted its first electric buses in 2013, is on track for a fully zero-emission network by 2028 and has chosen to own its depots outright, helping ensure continuity across operating contracts. Stockholm, meanwhile, has run entirely on renewable fuels since 2017.
These examples demonstrate that there is no single blueprint for sustainable mobility. Cities are experimenting with different approaches to fleet planning, infrastructure ownership, financing and contracting. Sharing these experiences allows others to build on what has already been tested, and avoid costly mistakes.
Is the transition equally easy everywhere?
Yet rapid market growth does not mean the transition is equally easy everywhere. Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia still fall short of their Clean Vehicles Directive targets. Smaller cities can lack the specialist procurement expertise and political continuity that frontrunners have built up over time.
Grid capacity is emerging as a strategic constraint, with several cities reporting that connecting new depots to the electricity network is now a greater bottleneck than purchasing the buses themselves. Supply chains remain a concern too, while the transition is proving more difficult for coaches and long-distance services than for urban routes.
As electrification moves into the mainstream, procurement is entering a new phase. The emphasis is shifting from securing vehicles to managing the wider ecosystem of infrastructure, contracts, risks and investment. Three trends stand out.
First, procurement is becoming more sophisticated. Public buyers are moving beyond vehicle purchase price towards full life-cycle cost, battery performance and structured risk-sharing between authorities and operators. As technologies and markets mature, contracts need to account for risks that were barely understood when the first large-scale electric bus tenders were launched.
Second, infrastructure ownership is becoming more strategic. More authorities are choosing to own depots and charging infrastructure directly, allowing them to manage grid connections, long-term investment and asset continuity across different operating contracts. Procuring a zero-emission bus fleet can no longer be separated neatly from the infrastructure that supports it.
Third, industrial and climate policy are increasingly converging. The EU’s Clean Industrial Deal and Automotive Action Plan link public procurement with the ambition to strengthen European industrial capacity and supply chains. For public buyers, this adds new considerations to the traditional questions of cost, performance and reliability.
The value of cooperation between cities
These challenges underline the value of cooperation between cities. As lead coordinator of the Zero-Emission Bus Systems and Services Community of Practice within Big Buyers Working Together, Eurocities brings together public buyers, operators, manufacturers, and EU institutions through webinars, study visits, technical guidance, and a growing online repository of procurement resources.
Our role is not to impose a single procurement model. It is to make knowledge travel faster. When one city solves a difficult problem, others should be able to build on that experience instead of starting from scratch.
With 660,000 buses needing replacement across Europe before 2035, that collective intelligence is not a nice-to-have. It is essential to turn today’s momentum into a faster, fairer, and more affordable transition to zero-emission public transport across Europe.