EPA’s Clean School Bus ‘Revamp’ Means Less Support for EVs – Inside Climate News

In the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Congress voted to invest $5 billion in accelerating a phase-out of diesel school buses across the country, a move meant to protect students from harmful pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But the Clean School Bus program has been on hold since President Donald Trump took office, with $2.3 billion still unspent.

On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced what it called a “revamp” of the program, signaling it would no longer favor electric school buses, where 95 percent of the money had been spent under President Joe Biden. Instead, the Trump administration is seeking to move to “a broad range of options,” including buses fueled by natural gas, biofuel or hydrogen.

Such a shift could lock grant recipients into investments in school buses that generate significant climate pollution for years, but EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said it is designed to provide school districts with increased choice and more affordable options.

“The Clean School Bus program has been a disaster of poor management and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars,” Zeldin said in a statement. “Today, EPA takes the next step to set the program straight. Americans can rest assured that moving forward, the program will be safe, effective, and use reliable forms of American energy.”

How Clean is “Clean?”

In announcing the changes, the EPA noted that the law has always allowed for a wider range of fuel options than electric school buses. Indeed, the law specifies that money can be used for “alternative fuel” vehicles, defined as “liquefied natural gas, compressed natural gas, hydrogen, propane, or biofuels,” as long as the EPA administrator certifies it will reduce emissions.

But the law does contain a provision requiring that at least 50 percent of the Clean School Bus funding be allocated each fiscal year for “zero-emission school buses.” In the U.S. market, experts say that means battery electric buses.

“It appears that EPA may be trying to stretch the definition of ‘clean’ school buses to include more buses that run on highly polluting fossil fuels,” said Melody Reis, federal policy director at the advocacy group Moms Clean Air Task Force in an email. “But the agency is still required to award at least 50 percent of funds to electric school buses.”

The EPA announcement was critical of electric buses, asserting that under Biden, the Clean School Bus program “forced unsafe and unreliable electric buses onto American schools.” It cited the example of Quebec’s Lion Electric, which filed for bankruptcy in 2024 after selling a reported 3,400 buses in the United States. The company’s new investors announced last year that they would not honor warranties on those vehicles.

“Sacrificing young lungs and futures to prop up corporate polluters is indefensible.”

— Katherine García, Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All

But other bus companies with electric school bus lines have expressed a continued commitment to the market over the past year, including Blue Bird Corporation, headquartered in Macon, Georgia, and Thomas Built Buses, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck North America LLC, which manufacturers its vehicles in High Point, North Carolina. 

Critics of the Trump administration see the planned changes to the Clean School Bus program as in line with its other moves to halt the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels, especially the EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions one week earlier.

“Once again, EPA is clearly demonstrating that it plans to fund fossil fuels and prioritize polluting corporate interests over our children’s health and our future,” said Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All program in an email. “Considering we have the funding, technology, and charging infrastructure to deploy electric school buses, no child should have to inhale carcinogenic pollution each day on their way to school. Sacrificing young lungs and futures to prop up corporate polluters is indefensible.”

The majority of the nation’s 500,000 school buses are diesel-powered, and an EPA study released just prior to passage of the infrastructure law estimated that 40 percent of the fleet had been in circulation for more than 11 years. Unlike many other diesel vehicles—trucks that haul loads on highways or tractors that plow farm fields—diesel school buses traverse residential areas daily, exposing residents to high levels of particulate matter and other pollutants. Studies have shown a significant reduction in respiratory illness when school bus diesel emissions are eliminated.

But switching to electric buses has been a difficult decision to make for chronically cash-strapped public school systems. A 2024 report in Resources for the Future’s magazine put the average price of an electric school bus at $352,000, or three and a half times the price of diesel buses, which typically cost less than $100,000. Although electric buses have lower maintenance and fueling costs for school districts, those savings typically have not been enough to offset the higher upfront cost of electric school buses unless they are subsidized.

The Clean School Bus program was meant to help school districts overcome the cost hurdle. And by increasing the number of electric buses purchased, the program was designed to drive the kind of investment in manufacturing facilities and supply chains that would lower the cost of the zero-emission vehicles over time. 

The revamped Clean Bus Program program Zeldin outlined would be far less ambitious. It still could reduce local air pollution significantly, depending on what type of buses districts purchase. But it is likely to offer only modest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and would not aim for the kind of industrial transformation the Biden plan was seeking.

For example, switching to natural gas buses instead of electric would mean lower up-front cost for school districts (and less need for federal subsidy money); they sell for $25,000 to $50,000 more than diesel buses, according to federal studies. Districts would have to invest in fueling stations, as they would need to set up charging stations for electric buses. The cost of fueling with compressed natural gas is currently 20 percent less than diesel. School districts also could reduce local pollution with natural gas buses, which generate up to 90 percent less particulate matter than diesel. Smog-forming NOx pollution could be 50 to 90 percent lower if the buses are equipped with low-NOx engines. But carbon emissions would only be up to 20 percent less than the greenhouse gas pollution from diesel buses.

Electric buses generate less than half the carbon emissions of natural gas buses, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists that took into account climate pollution from the electricity needed to charge the buses. In some parts of the United States, where the electric grid is cleaner, the climate advantages of electric buses are even greater—about 85 percent less carbon emissions than natural gas buses in upstate New York, where the grid relies heavily on hydropower, nuclear power and wind energy.

Because buses are a large capital spending item for school districts, the carbon emissions of newly purchased natural gas bus fleets will be locked in for years, with the help of subsidies from the Clean Bus Program.

“Ultimately, this means more pollution in the air our children breathe,” Reis said.

Under the Biden administration, the Clean School Bus program funded replacement of 8,900 school buses in 1,300 school districts, 95 percent of them zero-emission battery electric vehicles. The Biden administration made $965 million available when the most recent round of funding opened in the fall of 2024, doubling the offering of the previous year, when applications far surpassed the money available. Applications closed just before Trump took office in January 2025.

As part of its announcement on retooling the program, the Trump EPA said it would not be awarding any funds under that round. “EPA thanks applicants for their interest and encourages them to apply for the new grant program,” the EPA announcement said.

Reis said the months of limbo have been difficult for school districts and have delayed action on health harms for the 25 million students who ride school buses.

“Demand for clean school buses has been high, and hundreds, if not thousands, of school districts waited for over a year only to recently discover their applications would not be honored,” Reis said. “I can imagine they’re feeling disappointed and distrustful of the current EPA. It also means that thousands of kids who could have been riding electric school buses this school year are still riding the older, polluting buses that are harming our health and the environment.”

A Potential Hit to New York’s Mandate

Ground zero for the impact of Zeldin’s changes to the Clean School Bus program will be his home state of New York, where Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is spearheading implementation of one of the nation’s first electric school bus mandates. Hochul defeated Zeldin when she sought reelection in 2022. The Legislature approved the mandate, proposed by Hochul, as part of the state budget earlier that year. 

If EPA awards fewer Clean School Bus program grants for electric buses, that will mean less support for New York school districts, which are supposed to purchase only zero-emission buses by 2027. Prior to Trump’s return to the White House, 45 school districts in New York state, including New York City, received more than $210 million in grants and rebates from EPA’s Clean School Bus program for the purchase of 653 electric school buses, said a spokesperson for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which is administering the transition to electric school buses. About two-thirds of the state’s 730 school districts are participating in electrification plans, according to NYSERDA.

The aim of New York’s program is to transition the state’s entire school bus fleet to electric vehicles by 2035. New York has the nation’s largest school bus fleet, with nearly 50,000 vehicles, or 10 percent of the nationwide fleet. Six other states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland and Washington—also passed electric school bus mandates in the wake of the 2021 infrastructure law. Other states have pilot programs, like Illinois’ effort to test use of electric school bus charging to help increase stability of the grid. All stand to get less federal support than anticipated for that transition with the planned changes to the EPA program.

Hochul has made $500 million available for the state’s electric school bus transition from the from New York’s $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, enacted at the time of the mandate. “This program can bring the cost of an electric bus close to parity with a diesel bus and can cover up to 100 percent of the cost of charging stations,” a NYSERDA spokesperson said. In addition, the New York legislature’s 2025-2026 budget included an additional $100 million for zero-emission transportation, including school buses and supporting infrastructure. 

But some New York public school leaders have chafed at the state’s mandate and the New York State School Boards Association has called for lawmakers to repeal or significantly alter it—or have the state cover the full cost of the transition. The school boards association has said the anticipated increase in funding from the state falls short of the anticipated increase in costs.

“School board members recognize the perilous effects of a changing climate on students,” the association said in a position paper. “However, they must ensure that the decisions they make on behalf of their communities are financially and operationally sustainable. Unfortunately, as it is currently construed, and because of factors that have changed since its inception, the zero-emission school bus transition for too many districts is neither.”

One of the factors that have changed is the withdrawal of federal support for the transition to EVs under Trump.

As a first step toward implementing its revamped Clean School Bus program, the EPA is opening a 45-day public comment period in order “to seek feedback from fleet operators, manufacturers, school officials, and energy producers on a broad range of fuel options that school bus sectors could use,” the EPA said.