Wales will continue with an all-diesel bus fleet after the UK Government rejected all bids from outside England for green bus funding.
The Welsh Government has cut bus funding to local authorities and operators without offering balancing capital grants, as are available in England and Scotland for new vehicles and technology.
Last year, the UK Government invited bids from Wales as well as England for the Low Emission Bus Scheme 2016-17, to some excitement in the devolved nation.
However the winning bids, announced by the Department for Transport this week, all came from England.
A DfT spokeswoman said several Welsh bids had been submitted.
Many were rejected because the £30m available was only a quarter of the total amount bid for, she said.
Kevyn Jones, of innovative Cardiff-based operator New Adventure Travel, said he believed that Wales still had no buses powered by anything other than diesel.
He was not surprised by Wales’ failure to secure any LEBS grants because it was ‘behind the curve’, lacking any facilities to fuel and maintain non-diesel or hybrid buses.
‘England and Scotland are in front of us. If they’ve already got that infrastructure in place in their localities, another top-up bid for more buses to go in is more attractive.’
