The first electric school buses in the United States began operating a decade ago in three California school districts, providing a ride that was far less noisy, smelly and dirty than the diesel buses children and parents were accustomed to.
But despite the availability of the technology all these years, less than one percent of the 489,000 school buses in the U.S. were electric by the end of 2023.
That means that almost all the buses that take many of the country’s children to school still run on a fuel that sends dangerous pollutants into the air and is carcinogenic.
But that can change. The number of electric school buses on the road or on order nationwide has more than tripled in the past two years, according to the World Resources Institute’s Electric School Bus Initiative.
That means ten times as many students will ride electric school buses — from about 20,000 in 2020 to 200,000 three years later, according to WRI. The number of states with electric bus legislation or targets also grew, from two to 14 between 2020 and last year.
Still, parents, advocates and organizations face a number of challenges when looking to purchase electric school buses elsewhere.
“It’s just a matter of breaking down these barriers,” said Alicia Cox, a mother of two in Jackson, Wyoming. Her state is the only one where no electric bus is running or on order in any district.
Cox’s son, a second grader, often rides a diesel bus to school. As executive director of Yellowstone-Teton Clean Cities, a nonprofit focused on sustainable transportation, she regularly calls on school districts, fleet operators, other nonprofits and various agencies to make the switch — so far to no avail.
One of the biggest challenges continues to be cost, say parents, advocates and districts. Even with the fuel and maintenance savings of an electric bus, they cost two to three times more than diesel.
The Environmental Protection Agency is finally rolling out $5 billion in funds set aside for zero-emission buses in the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, passed in 2021. Nearly 440 grants and rebates totaling $1.8 billion have already been paid out to replace thousands of buses in various areas. one hundred school districts in the US
Demand for the money has been “encouraging,” said Christine Koester, director of the Clean School Bus Program at the EPA.
In addition to federal money, advocates have successfully pushed to secure funding from sources such as Volkswagen’s electric bus emissions scheme.
For those districts that do not receive funding, there are some options to lease electric buses from contract companies that provide the buses and equipment and lease them to districts at an affordable price.
STILL OUT OF RANGE
Dearborn Public Schools — a Detroit metro district where 70% of families are lower income — was ready to explore a new technology when it put its first electric bus into service in December 2022, said communications director David Mustonen.
Purchased with a $300,000 federal grant, it has only been operational for about three of the 12 months since then, due to maintenance and a learning curve with charging. That won’t discourage Dearborn from moving forward with adding another 18, but it’s a risk others may be reluctant to take.
Other barriers to the transition to electric are that districts sometimes take a long time to approve electric buses; Delivery can be delayed and sometimes electric buses need to boost the electrical supply for the chargers.
Wyoming denied funding from the EPA over concerns about how far the buses could go and storing them at low temperatures.
“Even though diesel isn’t that clean, it gets the job done,” Cox said schools and fleet managers told her.
Even where districts agree to purchase electric school buses, many continue to purchase new diesel buses in parallel. And while the Clean School Bus Program requires recipients to replace their oldest buses first, some districts can’t guarantee that because they don’t own their fleets but contract for them.
Meanwhile, parents, advocates and organizations said the switch to electricity usually happens when there is a “champion” in schools, but that in itself can be a hurdle, said Elizabeth Brandt, the mother of two children who attend Montgomery Public Schools County in Maryland. Her children rode the only electric school bus in her area for about a year before the route was changed.
Parents dealing with their children’s asthma are less likely to be able to advocate for change, Brandt said.
“If you save your sick time to help your child see a pulmonologist,” Brandt said, “you can’t necessarily be the one who’s always going to be there on a weekday talking to a legislator.”
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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.
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