Starting next year, all Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants must limit their low emissions zone to improve air quality in urban environments. It is set by the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law that the Government approved in 2021. A measure that is in line with the decarbonization objectives that the European Union set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Since then, the creation of these delimited areas within cities in which access, circulation and parking restrictions are applied has become a constant. In fact, between 2019 and 2022, the total number of low-emission zones has grown by 40% on the European continent, according to Clean Cities.
Among them, the French city of Grenoble stands out. What has been the European Green Capital throughout 2022 can boast of having the largest low-emissions zone in Europe. In addition, the city has been equipped with a broad, sustainable public transport network that is also constantly expanding and evolving.
For example, in 2025 it is proposed that all buses be low-emission. This is what a municipal energy transition law establishes. Steps are already being taken and biogas buses have been incorporated into its public transport system for four years. And, in a city where sustainable mobility options are here to stay, we also seek to promote the use of renewable fuels.
In the particular case of this French city, the metropolitan Aquapole wastewater treatment plant produces enough biogas (from sludge treatment) to operate more than 100 buses daily.
Grenoble’s mobility model goes beyond the delimitation of a low-emissions area and the renewal of the bus fleet. The city has been promoting the widespread use of scooters and bicycles for years – it is the largest metropolis in France in terms of the number of trips with this means – and has a hybrid and electric vehicle sharing service. Thanks to all these measures, Grenoble has managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% between 2005 and 2018, according to the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Observatory.
However, what makes the Grenoble low-emission zone a benchmark for European cities is the favorable reception it has received from citizens. They are a key actor in this mobility transformation. “Citizens increasingly express their way of wanting to move, their way of wanting to consume the city. It is not easy to change the consumer, what is easy is to give them options and let the consumer, or in this case the informed citizen, choose,” declares Jaime Martín Juez, from the Industrial Transformation and Circular Economy division at Repsol.
