September 22, 2022

Electric School Bus: Repowers, A Reader Retorts, and Alliance’s Advice to EPA

This article discusses Alliance’s recommendations to EPA for its next funding round, a report on how ESB's are driving a reader's states economy forward and more!

School bus staff have their heads down in the hectic hubbub of getting kids back to school, many fleets still laboring with chronic driver shortages. They make public education possible for our nation’s kids; they rock! Electric school bus (ESB) advocates (I’m in this group) have a short breather as we, bus staff/districts and the companies* that helped hundreds of districts apply for EPA funding last month all wait for EPA’s Clean School Bus Program to announce the winners of the rebate lottery in mid October. EPA’s second round will be a grant competition, announced later this fall.

This issue includes

Highlights of the nationwide Alliance’s recommendations to EPA for its next funding round
The bus most popular among repowering experts, and why repowers are crucial
Why ESB-based neighborhood resilience hubs are so dang hard
A reader reports how ESBs are driving his state’s economy forward
Notice of WASBE forum October 25th (Women Accelerating School Bus Electrification)
Corrections to August newsletter

New to me at STN’s Green Bus Summit in Reno last July: an ESB with storage compartments. Historically, most ESB models’ batteries have precluded any storage space for the athletic, musical, etc. equipment needed for activity trips. Transportation Directors often question whether ESBs can accommodate their activity trips, in addition to regular route trips. *photo by Alison Wiley*

I’m Alison Wiley here in Oregon, on a mission of electric buses, equity and inclusion. I’ve worked in low-carbon transportation since 2005, focusing on electric buses since late 2016. Mostly I collaborate, i.e. with Transportation Directors on getting their first ESBs, and with my excellent colleagues at Alliance For Electric School Buses, World Resources Institute, CALSTART and Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

Highlights of Alliance‘s Recommendations to EPA
The Alliance For Electric School Buses (AESB), of which this newsletter is a member, is an equity-focused, nationwide coalition of not for profit groups. The AESB gets its roots and leadership from Chispa; its members include Jobs To Move America, Sierra Club, Moms Clean Air Force, Union of Concerned Scientists, and at least 18 more. The below are highlights of the letter the Alliance is submitting to the EPA, with the goal of making its next funding round more equitable.

Prioritization of districts should reflect health burden (for ex., child asthma rates and non-attainment zones)
Make districts eligible whether they own or lease school buses
Improve definition of low income, for example, to which districts receive free/reduced lunch
Prioritize replacing oldest, most polluting buses first
Prioritize fewer districts (EPA’s first round prioritized 7,675 of about 13,500 districts in the U.S.)
Consider making repowered buses eligible for funding (see more below)
Provide funding for project management of ESB work
Encourage vehicle to building and vehicle to grid technology
Incentivize state, local and utility funding, and allow stacking/pairing of funds
However: matching funds must not be required (low income districts often don’t have these)
Promote high-road manufacturing
Training for drivers and for mechanics (emphasis mine, because their jobs change more dramatically)

An IC diesel bus among the first that SEA Electric is repowering with an electric drive train, under its contract with Midwest Transit Equipment. The contract calls for 10,000 repowers over five years. While SEA has repowered many medium and heavy duty vehicles in multiple countries, its competitor Unique Electric Solutions is the first to have repowered school buses operating in the U.S., in New York. photo by Midwest Transit Equipment

The Most Popular Bus To Repower

First, why am I obsessed with repowering existing diesel buses to electric? Because repowers are the nexus of low cost and speedy transition to zero emissions, plus good stewardship of existing resources. By good stewardship I mean not sending old, polluting buses into landfill, or to developing countries to keep polluting. EPA should start funding repowers in its next round!

The conventional ESB manufacturing queue is so long that districts that win EPA’s first lottery may not receive their new ESB’s for up to 24 months. And the new ESBs will cost $385k to $425k or more. In contrast, repowers can arrive at districts in one to four months, at costs of $160k-$175k, according to the below companies, depending on the size and location of the order.

Unique Electric Solutions (UES) in New York, and SEA Electric, a global company out of Australia, are the leading repower vendors in the school bus market. (Other repower companies include Complete Coachworks, Bison EV, Pepper Motion, Lightning eMotors and KleanBus). In my conversations with Michael Backman of UES and Bill Williams of SEA, they separately indicated that IC buses, also known as International, are their particular focus in their repowering work. Efficiency is key, only possible by mastering a given model. IC’s prevalence among the nation’s 480,000 school buses is cited as a reason for choosing it. SEA, with its large, five-year order from distributor Midwest Transit Equipment, plans to repower IC Type C’s at this time, while UES states they will repower “all IC Type B’s and Type C’s.” Backman adds UES can repower other buses, but the price and timeline may then vary.

General refurbishment of repowered buses, like new seats and fresh paint? It’s a separate cost from the above prices, which represent just changing out the drivetrain and installing batteries. But refurbishment is a key factor, in my view, to gain fleet acceptance of repowers. New and new-feeling buses inspire confidence. Yet, equally true is that bus drivers love familiar models, on which their eyes, hands and feet can make long-practiced motions. ESB adoption in general is hard; we need to make it easier whenever we can, including fostering familiarity.

Speaking of hard, here’s a follow-up to my 2021 article for School Transportation News on ESBs as potential local resilience hubs for low income communities. (In power outages or extreme weather, ESBs could discharge their electricity into a neighborhood building for many people to then use.) When I pitched the resilience idea to Transportation Directors, they expressed concern about potential vandalism of a (hyper-expensive) ESB being kept or used anywhere other than their bus yard. (Bus yards are rarely located near neighborhoods/potential resilience centers, but rather, in places with lower cost land.) I understood the roadblock and didn’t see a way forward at the time. But I still think the concept has legs. Power outages hurt poor people the worst, and ESBs’ battery storage should address their needs first. The idea needs lots of people working on it; let me know if you’re doing that!

Women Accelerating School Bus Electrification WASBE Forum Tue. October 25th, 10 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. EST. If you’re a woman who works in ESBs and you did not receive an invitation yesterday to this event, reply to this email if you’d like to be invited. I cofounded WASBE last year, along with Malinda Sandhu of Lion and Susan Mudd of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. Our purpose is to advance the electrification of school buses, with a shared focus on racial and gener equity. I’ll note too that women tend to be strong on the collaborative skills that ESB adoption requires. We also excel at having fun together!

Creating U.S. jobs is a key part of ESBs, and the growing clean energy-based economy in general. The new GreenPower ESB manufacturing plant in South Charleston, West Virginia will be creating up to 900 jobs. David Baber, Director of School Transportation, Finance and School Operations, West Virginia Department of Education, is the reader who replied to last month’s newsletter to educate me. “We currently have three Greenpower Type D electric school buses [that] will be “shuffled” between each of our 55 counties/districts for a six week period. We are currently dealing with charging infrastructure and training.” Lion is the other ESB manufacturer building a huge new plant to meet skyrocketing demand; theirs is in Joliet, Illinois.

Recommended: CALSTART‘s ESB Working Groups
Like most in the transportation electrification space, I am brand-agnostic, though not fuel-agnostic (zero emissions are the goal, which means electric propulsion, no internal combustion/gaseous fuels). But I do give shameless plugs to fellow not-for-profits helping bus fleets to electrify. I’d love to see legions of school bus fleets participate in CALSTART’s regionally based ESB working groups restarting up, and in some cases restarting, this fall. Rachel Chard writes: “Join CALSTART, WRI, and your peers for a series of collaborative working group meetings to learn and share about electric school bus (ESB) adoption. These are exclusive to school district representatives and employees, providing a dedicated space for confidential discourse about electrification for schools.” Contact SchoolBusTeam@Calstart.org.

Corrections to August Newsletter
California is among the states that have put various requirements/timelines for ESBs into place (I had named only New York, Maine, Maryland and Connecticut). Thanks to Ryan Gray of School Transportation News for that correction. And, the federal Inflation Reduction Act does include ESBs among eligible investments (I had written of indirect impacts only). I suspect that fact might be driving a recent uptick in firms asking to consult with me about the ESB market.

*School bus manufacturers and dealers were allowed to submit funding applications to EPA last month on behalf of school districts and Tribes. (In a few cases, both parties applied, and the EPA had to cleanse its applicant database of duplications). In contrast, third parties such as Highland and First Student (the nation’s largest contractor) could and did assist districts in preparing their applications, being named as a partner, but could not apply on their behalf.

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

Thanks!

Alison Wiley (she/her/hers)