Electric school buses (ESBs), which I advocate for but have always noted are challenging, get support from people who are wildly different from each other. Their motives differ wildly. ESBs are resisted by others, but quietly, for reasons that aren’t stated, at least not publicly. Unstated things can be oddly powerful.
For all the talk (including mine) of ESBs taking off, only 2.4% of the nation’s school bus fleets have yet ordered one or more ESBs. That’s 329 out of about 13,500 districts and Tribal fleets, with far fewer fleets yet deploying one. Why is progress so danged slow? How are the resisting forces stronger than the accelerating forces? How can that balance of power shift?
This issue includes:
- How some bus fleets are celebrating Black History month
- Motives driving ESB acceleration and resistance
- How acceleration can overcome resistance
- Screenshot of WASBE Forum earlier today (Women Accelerating School Bus Electrification)
- Key findings/advice for ESBs in underserved districts, plus excellent ESB Resource Library
I’m Alison Wiley here in Oregon, an ESB, equity and inclusion geek. I’ve worked in low-carbon transportation since 2006, focusing on electric buses since 2016. My newsletters (housed here) make the complex topic of ESBs more accessible and understandable, to a wide variety of readers. This newsletter is a member of the nationwide, equity-focused Alliance For Electric School Buses.
Motives For ESB Acceleration
Groups and individuals often have more than one of these motives.
- Hunger for profit and growth. Many companies see ESBs as highly profitable, or potentially so. Less obviously, governments and nonprofits can be growth-hungry, with varying abilities to manage their own growth, similar to for-profits. Elected officials need to show economic growth in order to get reelected. Some clean transportation organizations have been doubling and tripling their budgets and staff size, with ESBs being one factor.
- Children’s health. Prime motivator for nonprofits, especially Chispa, the pioneer of ESB advocacy. While children are famously safe from injury and death in school buses (thank you, government regulation), their health is directly harmed by diesel exhaust. 1.1 million fewer lost school days and 18,000 fewer cases of childhood asthma are expected to result from EPA’s 2027 rule (CNN), which rule restricts diesel exhaust but stops far short of requiring electric.
- Fighting climate change. I originally landed in ESBs for this reason. Once I got involved, the above motive deepened my commitment. Climate change motivates many nonprofits and governments to champion ESBs. It harms front-line communities the most, even as they produce the least emissions.
- Leadership | pride in mastering a new technology. I see this motive in bus fleet leaders and staff that are early and voluntary adopters of ESBs. We’d have no ESBs on the road without these folks.
- Government/regulatory pressure. California kicked these off early for ESBs; it has both notorious air quality problems, and also the world’s fifth largest economy (see profit/growth motives above).
- Peer pressure. Peer bus fleets getting ESBs is powerful; see my newsletter on where ESB culture is thriving.
Motives For ESB Resistance
Some are the same as for acceleration, just flipped in the other direction.
- Profit. Diesel buses are profitable, having been mass-produced for decades. Moreover, petroleum, which diesel is made from and which drives climate change, is more profitable than ever (WSJ). ESBs are disruptive to the incumbent bus manufacturers (Blue Bird, Thomas Built and IC, in order of their penetration into the ESB market) and their hundreds of dealerships, though not to the purpose-built ESB manufacturers (Lion, GreenPower, BYD). Repowers of mid-life diesel buses to electric, if they take off, could disrupt the profits of all the above, because they cost about 50% less than new. So much to resist here if your prime or only motive is profits.
- Lack of government policy or funding. For example, only four states have yet set any timelines on electrifying school bus fleets. Many state governments, including here in Oregon, have provided no funding for them.
- Retirement around the corner. Some school district leaders don’t have the energy for ESBs. They’re avoiding action and running out the clock until they retire. A shining exception is Michael Shields, the former Transportation Director of Salem-Keizer School District here in Oregon, who steadily “planted seeds” for ESBs in his final years before retirement. Salem-Keizer is now running Oregon’s first electric special education bus, under Shields’ successor T.J. Crockett. Another exception is Craig Beaver, who pioneered Oregon’s first general education ESBs onto the road after forty years in the bus industry.
- Peer pressure. It’s not even pressure, it’s just the shared air being breathed, when bus fleet peers continue to do what they’ve always done, i.e. run internal combustion buses. (All fuel types except electric run on internal combustion, and produce tailpipe emissions.) As I’ve stated many times, school bus work is flipping hard, before you even get your first ESB. We all need to acknowledge this.
Resolution: Priorities and Roles
And my opinion? Thanks for asking, and for reading this far down.
Children’s health has got to trump profit in the transition to ESBs. This is not a radical idea. For decades, children’s safety (from crashes) has come before profit, i.e. the manufacturers comply with federal regulation of bus construction, and bus fleets comply with state inspection requirements. We need to become clear that profit, while it has a role in the ESB transition, cannot call the shots. It can’t delay the transition to ESBs, or unfairly inflate the cost. Government has a key role in directing priorities.
Repowering has a key role in protecting children’s health. Repowers of certain mid-life diesel school buses with electric drivetrains save money and resources, and speed up the transition exponentially. Look for two upcoming articles on repowers: one next week from the Electric School Bus Initiative of the World Resources Institute (WRI) (subscribe to their updates here) and one from School Transportation News in March, by me and Tim Farquer of Williamsfield Schools in Illinois. Tim’s district will soon receive its first repower.
Corey Muirhead is the best advocate for repowers, with three repowered school buses in service since 2021, and two more in testing, soon to go into service. Muirhead is Executive Vice President of Logan Bus in New York, which contracts with multiple school districts. Back to the power of peers with practical experience, Brittany Barrett and Katrina Morris are especially credible when they advocate for ESBs, Barrett of WRI because she’s got the experience of having managed a transit bus fleet, and Morris because she’s the Transportation Director of West Shore Educational Service District AND the Executive Director of Michigan Association for Pupil Transportation. Serious street cred.
Most school bus fleets can electrify with mostly Level 2 (L2) charging (with the exception of field trips). That’s a finding from Center For Transportation and the Environment’s report issued February 1, 2023, based on analysis of three school bus fleets in underserved areas, including that of the Chickasaw Nation in Ada, Oklahoma. L2 charging costs about one-tenth of L3 to install (DCFC is the more technically correct term for fast, high kilowatt charging, but L3 is more easily understood).
Note that vehicle to grid (V2G) activity and revenue is only possible with DCFC/Level 3 charging. I plan to write more about V2G soon. CTE also found that charging infrasture costs typically run higher than projected, and that districts should engage design-build firms early on to get estimates of true charging installation cost.
Finally, check out this state of the art ESB Resource Library
Financial support for this newsletter is provided in part by the World Resources Institute. While the World Resources Institute may engage as a partner on content, it does not control, nor does it necessarily endorse, the contents of this newsletter.
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)
Electric School Bus Newsletter
I am on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Chinook and Cowlitz peoples.
Whose land are you on?