The Biden administration on Wednesday announced award recipients for nearly $1 billion through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Bus Program to add nearly 2,500 electric buses to the nation’s fleet.
“What an exciting day for children and parents all across the country,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in announcing the awards. “Every day, millions of children ride the bus to and from school is the quintessential part of being a kid in America. But we all know that traditional vehicles that rely on the internal combustion engines emit toxic pollutants in the air.”
Over 25 million school children ride the bus to and from school each day, the vast majority of of which are powered by diesel engines. The EPA has noted diesel air pollution is linked to asthma and other health problems that disproportionately impact students in communities of color and tribal areas.
Of the 2,463 buses that will join school fleets across the country, the vast majority will be electric; a “very small number” of compressed, natural gas buses are also included in the award pool and a little over 100 buses are propane-powered, officials said.
Vice President Kamala Harris joined administrator Regan in Seattle on Wednesday afternoon to further highlight the administration’s investment in clean buses and the impact electric vehicle infrastructure will have on both the environment and economy.
"I met with some of our young leaders this morning, on our way here and one of them said to me – I said, 'well, what is today about?' and they said, 'saving our planet,'" Harris said from Lumen Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, on Wednesday, later adding: "We owe it to our children to right now take these issues very seriously. The clock is ticking loudly."
A number of studies have shown that public transportation like buses emit a significant amount of pollution – particularly aging vehicles that might be poorly maintained. According to the EPA nearly 27% of U.S. emissions come from the transportation sector, which includes the nation's school bus fleets.
A portion of the funding can be spent on installing electric vehicle charging stations. The money must be spent on American-made buses, a fact Harris celebrated on Wednesday.
"We know that domestic manufacturing means that we can create jobs right here in the United States. And that by creating these jobs, because we are creating a new industry, we must also then think about what the jobs require, which is highly skilled labor," the vice president said. "And what then that needs in terms of investing in apprenticeship programs, investing in training programs, to build the skills in America's workforce, to do the work of growing this new industry, which is totally directed at benefiting our children."
School districts can now begin working with manufacturers and other partners to place purchase orders for their technologies of choice, after which the White House will distribute funds, a process that must be completed by April 2023. Distribution of the buses will begin “as soon as they can be delivered by bus manufacturers,” officials added.
Different cities and regions will receive varied amounts of buses to coincide with their population. Atlanta, with roughly 52,000 students in which a little over half are economically disadvantaged, will get 25 buses to “kickstart their fleet conversion,” per White House senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu; Washington, D.C., New York City, Baltimore, Compton, Calif., and Dallas will also receive 25 buses, the largest fleet awarded to any city.
In an interview with Spectrum News, Landrieu broke down how the money will be distributed nationwide:
"This money gets sent down to these districts who have won this competition, then they're able to communicate with one of the five manufacturers across the country and, and give them specifications for the electric buses, and then those buses will be delivered," Landrieu told Spectrum News' Angi Gonzalez.
Here's a breakdown of the number of new electric buses in certain states, per Landrieu:
- New York: 184
- California: 177
- Texas: 144
- Massachusetts: 76
- Wisconsin: 73
- Kentucky: 68
- Missouri: 56
- Ohio: 38
- Maine: 34
- Florida: 30
- North Carolina: 31
- Hawaii: 25
“These awards will transform school bus fleets across the country, replacing older polluting blood buses with cleaner and zero emission school buses and boosting American manufacturing,” Regan said.
The funding is the first round of $5 billion allocated through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed by Congress last November, to be spent on low- and zero-emission buses over the next five years.
The rebate application opportunity was first announced in May, when the EPA said it would make $500 million available for clean buses and related programs, but due to “overwhelming demand from school districts across the country,” the agency doubled the total funding to $965 million, an administration official said.
Just over 1% of the nation’s nearly half-million public school buses were electric as of last year.
The Biden administration hopes the increase in electric and hybrid buses across the country will lower pollution, and move the United States towards President Joe Biden’s ambitious goal of becoming a net-zero-emission country by 2050.