Electric School Busses
We may have ridden them. Our kids are probably riding them. Twenty million school-age kids ride buses to school each week. Almost all of them are diesel, which means our kids are being exposed to air inside these buses whose pollution levels are twelve times higher than normal.
But this is about to change.
As of March 2022, 415 school districts across the country, including New York state, have committed to purchasing 12,275 Electric School Buses (ESBs), and that number is on the rise. Twenty-two models are now available, some capable of traveling between 75 and 210 miles without needing to be recharged.
Electric School Buses are:
- more cost-effective than diesel to run and maintain
- cleaner, healthier for all of us, and especially for our kids
- better choices for our planet
Cost Benefits: Upfront costs for ESBs are considerable, but with an infusion of funds from both state and federal governments, they become affordable choices. The federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act now provides $5 billion over five years to the EPA to establish the Clean School Bus Program. This Program will allocate monies to school districts and other eligible contractors for new ESBs. Multiple funding sources and opportunities exist, including not only federal grants but also state grants and Volkswagen Settlement funds.
ESBs can significantly lower operational and maintenance costs, saving districts between $4000 and $11,000 per school bus every year. Operational expenditures such as fueling and maintenance/repair costs are greatly reduced because there are many fewer parts to maintain. Because ESBs don’t require either engine oil or a transmission, and because only about 20 parts in the electrical system are motorized (compared with 2000 in a diesel engine), they need far fewer fluid changes. Fueling and maintaining electric models could be less than half the cost of diesel models over a 12-year lifetime.
Additional savings are possible by equipping ESBs with bi-directional charging, allowing a bus to serve as a mobile generator by becoming a backup battery for a building (to provide power during an emergency, for example) or for another load. A bi-directional bus can also discharge stored electricity to the grid, thereby reducing a district’s utility costs.
Health Benefits: Diesel fumes are a major source of particulate matter which, according to new, groundbreaking research, can awaken the dormant mutations that most of us carry in our lungs and tip them into a cancerous state. Chronic exposure to air pollution, including the fumes from diesel buses, increases the odds of that happening. Children who are exposed to the negative impacts of diesel exhaust, both while waiting for and while riding the bus, are at increased risk for lung problems, including asthma and pneumonia. In addition, tests have shown that reducing exposure to diesel exhaust can – especially for elementary school children – improve school attendance as well as standardized test scores.
Climate Benefits: The manufacture and operation of ESBs produce half as many greenhouse gas emissions as diesel buses. Plus they have zero tailpipe emissions. Electrifying the entire fleet of U.S. school buses would avoid close to 7.5 million metric tons of C02 emissions per year.
This past April, thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul, New York State passed legislation mandating that the state’s 50,000 school buses become 100% electric by 2035. A spokesperson commented that “This plan . . . sets a clear benchmark for other states looking to protect kids’ health.”
Pennsylvania should follow suit.
To learn more, go to: https://www.epa.gov/cleanschoolbus
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