Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: September 20, 2024
The epic U.S. electric school bus rollout!
Oakland just got a new, 100% electric fleet of 74 clean school buses, helping protect kids from air pollution and climate change.
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Reasons For Hope
Oakland, California just became the largest school district in America to transition to a 100% clean school bus fleet, with 74 electric school buses recently deployed by scrappy startup Zum. Electric school buses are a manifest “win-win-win,” reducing kids’ exposure to harmful air pollution from exhaust while saving on fuel costs for schools and reducing carbon emissions.
And these particular electric school buses aren’t just critical pollution-free transport - they’re rolling grid-scale batteries! The 74 clean school buses just deployed in Oakland come with vehicle-to-grid technology so they can store power when there’s extra electrons available and feed it back into the grid when needed.
The great U.S. electric school bus rollout is getting more and more impressive, and it’s just getting started. Interestingly, all of it is happening thanks to the personal leadership of Kamala Harris! In 2019, Senator Kamala Harris introduced the Clean School Bus Act, calling for federal grants to replace school buses with cleaner electric school buses. It didn’t pass then, but as Vice President, she successfully worked to ensure that these provisions were included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, establishing the $5 billion EPA Clean School Bus Program.
"There were a few times that [funding for clean buses] was on the table, off the table…
I'm confident that the only reason why the final text even made it into actual legislation is because it was something that was important to the Vice President."
-Congresswoman Jahana Hayes to CBS, on Kamala Harris’ leadership on this issue
Since then, the EPA has awarded $3 billion from that program to fund approximately 8,500 clean school buses at 1,000 U.S. schools. Oakland is the biggest district yet to go for an all-electric fleet, but it’s just the first of many!
In two years, Kamala Harris successfully moved electric school buses from a policy proposal to a transformative nationwide investment, helping a generation of American kids breathe easier as they ride to school on non-polluting transportation. This definitely needs to be a better-known story.
What a great way to start my day with this wonderful news.
Brava to Kamala and all concerned. From
your Canadian cousins.