Akershus a leading county

Akershus County Council contributes to make Akershus a leading county regarding environmental policy for minimizing climate emissions and energy use. Our ambition is by 2030 to reduce the climate gas emissions from Akershus to half of what was emitted in 1990. This is a very ambitious goal, as we are expecting a population growth of between 150 and 200 000 citizens in Akershus County throughout this time period.

The County Council has worked actively with climate issues for the past 15 years, our main efforts being put into reducing CO2 emissions caused by transportation – as almost 80 per cent of the county’s emissions derive from transportation alone. Therefore, we are using substantial resources to help increase the amount of people travelling by public transportation, bicycle and by foot. In addition it is our aim to contribute to the early implementation of electro-mobility in the Oslo and Akershus region.

An important part of these endeavors is early introduction of battery and fuel cell electric vehicles as an alternative to fossil fuels. To achieve this the County Council support a program to expand the number of charging points for battery electric vehicles, and the council is one of the driving forces behind the ambitious initiatives that have resulted in six hydrogen stations in the greater Oslo region area, and, in the CHIC-Oslo demonstration project. By the end of September we had about 5.500 (five and a half thousand) battery electric vehicles on the roads in South East Norway, half of them in Akershus, some 20 fuel cell electric vehicles, and five fuel cell buses.

Fuel cell buses is an important part of our hydrogen strategy and therefore we want to use the CHIC-Oslo project as the first step to develop a bigger fleet of hydrogen buses run by Ruter. It is the owner´s common aim that the vehicles operated by Ruter within 2020 are driven solely by sustainable energy carriers – mainly based on bio-waste gas, hydrogen and electric based solutions with electricity from guaranteed sustainable sources.

I will also congratulate Ruter with the set up and management of CHIC-Oslo. It has so far been run as an excellent project with a very dedicated project leadership, and this is promising for the future contribution to the electro mobility society. I look forward to follow the commitments of Ruter on further development.