Met Police strives for zero vehicle emissions by 2050

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has launched an programme to achieve zero emissions across its vehicles by 2050.

As part of this ambition, MPS is now trialling a fleet of hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Seth Finkelstein, the Met’s Fleet Services Air Quality lead, said: “Alongside our existing fleet of hybrid and electric cars, we want to explore whether hydrogen power could also become part of our future.

"We have a range of zero and ultra-low emission vehicles (including hybrids, fully electric, and hydrogen) as part of our fleet, in fact, we now have over 500 of these in operational roles. We are striving to increase this amount as we move forward and are continuously engaging with vehicle manufacturers around new technologies and are open to trial all new technology that can support our operational requirements, such as hydrogen and fuel cell power. It should be noted however, that as new technology is rolled out, there are always barriers to overcome. In this instance, it’s the availability of hydrogen refuelling stations that will need to be addressed to help further the use of these vehicles.”

The 21 hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai’s have so far clocked up over 260,000 emission free miles.

Ten of these cars have been partly funded by the European Commission as part of the FCH JU (Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking) research programme through the ZEFER project (Zero Emission Fleet vehicles For European Roll-out).