Water Management As a New Saving Opportunity for Bus Managers: Evidence from the LIFEH2OBUS Project

LIFEH2OBUS, a project within the European Commission's LIFE program, aims to evaluate water usage in the bus sector during vehicle cleaning. This re-search is pioneering because water conservation in this field remains largely unexplored, lacking specific standards to prevent unnecessary water consump-tion. A single bus cleaning session requires around 300 litres of water, occur-ring four times a week per bus, totalling 43 million cubic meters annually for the European bus fleet. Furthermore, bus washing is energy-intensive, and most garages lack wastewater treatment facilities. LIFEH2OBUS and this paper as-sess the implementation of three innovative water-saving technologies in bus garages across Europe: water reclamation, water reclamation and harvesting, and waxing. A cost-benefit analysis reveals an impressive 84% reduction in wa-ter consumption after one year, saving 37 million litres for the test fleet of 680 buses. Scaling up to 50% of the European transit fleet over five years could save 18 billion litres/year, equivalent to 42% of the transport sector's water use, reduce energy consumption by 1,159 GWh, and cut 504 ktCO2eq greenhouse gas emissions, saving 151 million Euros. This paper introduces this technologi-cal process and demonstrates its substantial water and energy-saving potential in the transport sector, advancing scientific knowledge in this field.