What do electric school buses (ESBs) have to do with the new movie “The Lost Bus”, based on real-life events, featuring a Thomas Built diesel Type C bus and a gritty, unglamorous Matthew McConaughey? Quite a bit. This is the first time in six years of newsletter writing that I’m recommending a movie to you. Even as you’re busy getting ready for the holidays, stay with me here to learn why it’s not just good entertainment, but telling us things we need to hear.
This issue includes:
- Lessons from “The Lost Bus” movie
- Update on MOVER resilience project in Hood River, Oregon
- Direct Pay solar funding available for schools in 2026
- WASBE Forum January 14th (Women Accelerating School Bus Electrification)
- Surprising news on bus funding
I’m Alison Wiley here in Oregon, a partner in MOVER, the vehicle to building (V2B) project for community resilience in Hood River, Oregon. I’ve worked in low-carbon transportation since 2006, and I founded this Electric School Bus Newsletter in 2019 (archives here). I’ve moderated ESB panels at the STN West conference and the Green Transportation Summit and Expo. I’ve done contracted ESB projects for the World Resources Institute’s Electric School Bus Initiative, Pacific Power, and Portland General Electric, and my former employers include Center for Transportation and the Environment and Forth Mobility. In an effort to keep updating my mental map and not be a damn fool, I’m writing these days about our fast-changing energy and resilience landscape as well as ESBs.
“We’re being damn fools,” the Cal Fire chief of command said in “The Lost Bus”, referring to their outdated approach to addressing northern California’s Camp Fire in 2018 that, with high winds, consumed a full acre per second. Noting that wildfires now are bigger and more frequent than ever before, the chief had had to abandon fighting the fire, after enormous efforts had had zero impact on containing it, and pivot to just saving lives, if they could. 83 people died, a record, which fortunately (spoiler alert) did not include the 22 children in the school bus that real-life driver Kevin McCay bravely piloted.
The firefighters were from a different era than they’d landed in. This is true for all of us adults as we navigate rates of change — in technology, climate, the economy and more — that are unique in human history. It’s a bizarrely warm winter day as I’m writing this, which will lead to less snowpack and thus less hydropower come spring. The pivot from mastering situations (we’ll put that fire out!) to adapting to situations (ignore the fire; we’ll save lives if we can!) is uncomfortable. I’m definitely uncomfortable. We need to steadily update our mental maps. But utilities, which modern life depends on, especially struggle to do that.
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) was found guilty for the 83 Camp Fire deaths, due to a decades-long practice of neglecting critical infrastructure, which leads to sparks that ignite wildfires. It declared bankruptcy after being charged billions in fines and penalties, and continued to operate. It then raised its residential rates for electricity (paid by people like you and me) by 17.2% from 2023 to 2024, following a 13.2% increase in 2023. To its credit, it’s operating the nation’s most successful V2G pilot in the country, in partnership with Zum and Oakland Unified School District, innovatively sending power from 74 ESBs steadily back into its oversubscribed grid. But a number of major utilities, including Pacific Power, are being hit with enormous wildfire-liability lawsuits, while also having increasing power outages.
The power, in fact, went out last Friday morning as I met with Brandon Coonrod, the director of transportation for Portland Public Schools (PPS). Pacific Power is their utility. While he dealt with radio communications (bus radios don’t depend on electricity), I chatted with other PPS staff about the MOVER concept. “If you had a vehicle to building microgrid, you could have electricity for at least some things right now. My TEDx talk describes it.” (Their main building’s diesel generator failed to switch on, though the fleet building’s generator did go on). Brandon later told me the power didn’t come online again until late afternoon, after his Plan B for afternoon routes was well underway. He is good at steadily updating his mental map, and he also notes that he has a great team.
MOVER Project Adds Solar Array
Ground-mounted solar costs much less than solar panels atop carports, we learned. Carport solar was our first choice due to the added shade benefit. The escalating heat in some regions is such that even veteran bus drivers are declining to drive summer routes unless their buses are air conditioned. And roof mounted solar requires a roof with many years of useful life left on it.
School districts can get a 30% direct pay on new solar panels via tax credit for projects that begin construction between January 1, 2026, and July 4, 2026 (some supply chain restrictions apply). If you’d like me to connect you to volunteer solar experts who can help you navigate this, reply to this email. 10% of school districts already have some solar; it is by far the cheapest and most common form of new energy construction in both the U.S. and the world. Think about it: after the infrastructure is built, the sun (fuel source) itself is free, unlike fossil-fueled energy, which is controlled by corporations, always costs us and never becomes free.
Update on Bus Funding
In contrast to the frozen status of the final two billion of the federal Clean School Bus Program, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) on November 20 awarded two billion in grants from the Low and No Emissions funding program. Low-No grants got electric transit buses underway many years before ESBs started taking off, but this round, unsurprisingly, funded only compressed natural gas (CNG), hybrid and “new buses”. That last term sounds vague enough to be open to diesel buses, which would be illegal under Low-No. It’s also highly illegal to use project money for any project or fuel type other than what it was officially awarded for.
If (big if) the federal Clean School Bus Program were to become reactivated, i.e. making awards to the applications submitted almost a year ago in January 2025, the Low-No awards suggest they would be for fossil-fueled buses, not electric, and I’d assume largely propane, since many more districts run that than CNG. No hybrid school buses exist, to my knowledge.
That said, I do remain convinced that ESBs are here to stay. As with permitting for energy-hogging data centers (a topic for a future newsletter) many decisions are made by states and local governments. While both school buses and public transit are essential, school buses provide many more rides annually in the U.S. (10 billion, NCES) than public transit (7.66 billion rides, APTA), and those rides are to small people whose lungs are highly vulnerable to diesel exhaust. As I’ve said before, I love all school buses because they make public education possible, plus they’re driven by admirable people like Kevin McKay. I just love electric buses in particular.
WASBE Forum (Women Accelerating School Bus Electrification)
Wed. January 14
10 am PST, Noon CST, 1 pm EST
Speaker: Kelly Yearick, who runs the Vehicle to Grid program at Portland General Electric here in Oregon, also its Electric School Bus Program that has funded 73 ESBs in rural, suburban and urban districts. If you’re a woman whose work or interests involve ESBs, you’re invited. Look for the WASBE email invitation with link sent November 6th by my co-founder Malinda Sandhu to our WASBE distribution list. If you can’t find that, reply to this email, and she and Susan Mudd and I will be sure to include you.
Highland Fleets, which now operates 531 ESBs in many states for many districts, has received the contract from the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles to supply its school bus transportation. Zero emissions transport at a U.S. Olympics site is groundbreaking, and especially valuable in the notoriously air-pollution-prone L.A. basin, where I happen to have grown up.
To wrap up, as you head into holiday break, I recommend both “The Lost Bus” movie (though not for your young children, too scary!) and the book on which it’s based: “Paradise: One Town’s Struggle To Survive An American Wildfire” by Lizzie Johnson. I’m interested to hear your own takeaways; there are many more ways to update our mental maps than I’ve yet considered. My conversations with you, my colleagues and readers, have been a shining light for me in 2025. I’ll see you next year.
Alison Wiley (she/her/hers) LinkedIn
Electric School Bus Newsletter
TEDx talk “Electric School Buses Improve Our Lives”
To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together. — African proverb