The 2026 budget is currently being debated in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. The draft was presented by Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil and will be debated for around two months before being voted on at the end of November. The debates will not be easy. Many ministries will have to work with significantly smaller budgets because tax revenues are far from sufficient to cover government spending.
Austria has opened the eighth application period for its "Emissionsfreie Busse und Infrastruktur" (EBIN) program, designed to accelerate the transition of public transport fleets to zero-emission propulsion. The call for proposals is active from yesterday, September 3rd, until October 22, with a total budget of approximately €80 million. The EBIN program provides support for both vehicles and the infrastructure required to operate them.
Particularly since the pandemic, lots of people seem to have forgotten how to behave with common courtesy in public. I've started pulling people up on this kind of behaviour and it's really satisfying, to be honest. However, I think the other issue is a structural one: our public services, particularly transport (outside of London, anyway) are massively degraded. Asking people to respect public spaces, if it's going to work, needs to be a two-way street:
This is exactly the kind of leadership we need from major public bodies to unlock investment in clean energy infrastructure. TfL is helping to bring forward large-scale UK solar - the cheapest and quickest form of new electricity generation.
