EPA Administrator Michael Regan was in Jackson, Miss., on May 29 to take a ride on one of the city’s 25 electric school buses, funded with grants from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.  

He also announced another $900 million in IIJA awards that could put 3,400 more clean school buses on the road in 532 school districts across the U.S.  

The bipartisan 2021 law provided EPA with $5 billion for its clean school bus program, and with the latest announcement, EPA has awarded more than $2.7 billion of that total, which will allow about 8,500 diesel buses to be replaced, Regan said.  

The awards are going to 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. No school districts in Alaska, Hawaii or Nevada applied for funds, according to a senior administration official speaking on background. 

School districts in low-income, disadvantaged, rural and tribal communities have been a top priority, making up about 45% of awardees and receiving 67% of the funds, according to an EPA announcement. Most but not all of the new buses will be electric ―92% ― with the remainder running on propane, which has significantly lower emissions than diesel. 

“The majority of the communities that are receiving these school buses are communities that look like this one,” Regan said, speaking at Jackson’s Henry J. Kirksey Middle School on the last day of classes. “They are black and brown communities; they are tribal communities; they are communities that have been disproportionately impacted by pollution for far too long. … 

“We all know that traditional school buses rely on engines that emit toxic pollutants in the air, putting the health and wellbeing of every single student in jeopardy,” he said. The IIJA funds are aimed at “reimagining what it’s like for children to ride to and from school each and every day.” 

Jackson is a case in point — and a strategic choice for the announcement as a state capital that already has experienced significant impacts of climate change. The city has survived two 30-year floods in the past four years, along with occasional blasts of subfreezing weather, with temperatures even colder than Anchorage, Alaska, according to Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D).  

Echoing Regan, Lumumba stressed the environmental justice message behind the city’s new buses, combining concern for children and “the way in which they commute from their homes to their learning environments,” and for the community at large as it seeks to “eradicate the challenges of climate change.” 

Getting Diesel off the Road

The May 29 announcement represents the third round of IIJA funding for clean school buses, and the program has been one of the Biden administration’s more successful initiatives, in terms of getting dollars out to communities and getting diesel buses off the road.  

The program’s focus on the risks diesel emissions pose to children’s health and the benefits of electric school buses has made it less controversial than other transportation electrification initiatives, such as EPA’s recent rules on cutting carbon dioxide emissions from light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. 

The administration official said each round of funding for the clean bus program has been oversubscribed. 

But the program hit some bumps early on as school districts faced a steep learning curve on working with utilities to get chargers for their new buses connected to local distribution systems.  

At this point, program materials provide a template for school districts that include early communication with their local utilities to discuss if any grid upgrades will be needed and what they might cost. EPA is working with the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which can offer school districts technical assistance, the administration official said.  

EPA also now allows IIJA funds to be used for chargers and some of the equipment needed for interconnection and does not set specific limits on the portion of federal dollars that can be spent on charging infrastructure.  

Ben Prochazka, executive director of the Electrification Coalition, pointed to the potential use of electric school buses as grid resources “to provide backup power to communities during emergencies with vehicle-to-grid technology,” making them “a win-win-win for kids, schools and communities.”