The Biden administration is dispersing nearly another billion dollars in federal grants for school districts nationwide to decarbonize their bus fleets, despite recent inspector general findings casting doubt on the program.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a joint announcement with the White House, said it had selected 67 applicants to receive approximately $965 million to purchase electric and low-emission school buses. [emphasis, links added]
The funding means the agency has now awarded nearly $2 billion for thousands of new buses across hundreds of school districts under its Clean School Bus Program, which was created in late 2021. …snip…
The grants unveiled Monday will help selected applicants purchase more than 2,700 electric or low-emissions school buses in 280 school districts serving more than seven million students across 37 states, according to EPA.
Those awards come a year after the EPA awarded more than $875 million to 2022 applicants under the program, funding the replacement of 2,366 buses at 372 school districts.
The Clean School Bus Program was created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which President Biden signed into law in November 2021.
The legislation provides a total of $5 billion in federal grants through 2026 to replace existing diesel-powered school buses nationwide.
The agency has projected the program will fund thousands of new electric school buses. [For the most common school buses, electric options range from $320,000 to $440,000, while diesel versions cost about $100,000. That does not include charging infrastructure costs.] …snip…
However, the EPA Office of Inspector General in late December published the findings of an audit that determined that the Clean School Bus Program was largely dependent on utility companies’ ability to increase power supplies.
Further, the program may also face significant delays, according to the inspector general, without the construction of additional charging stations.
Entities interviewed by the inspector general’s office specifically expressed concern about the ability of utility providers to bring power lines and transformers to school districts with electric buses.
While some power providers have experience with electric bus infrastructure, they said they had never built such infrastructure at scale.
Establishing charging stations and connecting them to the regional power grid could take as much as two years, according to the report.
Additionally, bus charging stations that are expected to support more than 25 buses in larger school districts face other challenges since they require different technology.
“The Agency may be unable to effectively achieve program goals unless it can ensure that school districts will be able to establish the infrastructure necessary to support clean bus and charging purchases,” the EPA inspector general concluded.
“There could be delays in utilities constructing the needed charging stations to make the buses fully operational in a timely manner.”
“While early coordination with utilities is not a requirement, it could prevent the Agency from achieving its objective to remove older diesel buses and replace them with clean buses,” the report continued.
“The increased demand on manufacturers and utility companies may impact the timeliness of replacing diesel buses and ultimately may delay program health and environmental benefits.”
Read more at Fox News
More Taxes sown the sewer over Bidens political agenda this Idiot makes Carter look better
It would be nice if they solved the spontaneous battery ignition problem before they start loading school children into EV buses.
Diesel buses are already clean. CO2 is NOT a pollutant and is PLANT FOOD.
EV buses are a joke as they are a failed technology. From beginning (origin if minerals) to end (disposal if the stupid battery) these cars are the least green on the planet.
As reported in the Climate Change Dispatch, The Swedish municipality of Skellefteå had to shut down their public transportation for periods of time because their all electric fleet couldn’t run in the very cold temperatures. I wonder how often school districts in the north of the United States will have suspend service for the same reason.