After it was announced that the state would receive funding for more early next year, Oregon will soon have more than 200 federally financed electric school buses transporting students to and from school.
On December 11, the EPA declared that it had given the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality about $6.5 million to retire 26 diesel buses and replace them with electric vehicles. According to an EPA news release, the funds will also be used to train 17 mechanics in the Beaverton and Reynolds school districts to operate on electric buses and charging infrastructure, as well as to install additional EV chargers.
According to the EPA, buses that run on diesel and heavy-duty gas generate significant amounts of air pollutants that contribute to cardiovascular illness and asthma, as well as greenhouse gases that accelerate climate change. Transportation is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon, according to DEQ data, therefore state officials are working to reduce it.
Democrat Ron Wyden, the senior U.S. senator from Oregon, stated that the funding will be beneficial.
The answer to addressing this issue head-on in Oregon and around the country, according to Wyden, is to create chances like these with school buses to cut those emissions.
The Clean Heavy-Duty Vehicles Grant Program, which was created in 2022 by the Inflation Reduction Act, is the source of the $6.5 million. According to the press release, it will be given out in early 2025 and can be used for any purpose within the next three years.
Since 2022, Oregon has also received about $64 million in subsidies and rebates from the EPA for 23 school districts, enabling them to buy roughly 200 electric school buses. The third-largest school district in the state, Beaverton, was the first to buy an electric bus and currently has the biggest fleet of these vehicles. District data indicates that electric buses are half as expensive to operate as the district’s propane-powered school buses and have one-third the operating costs of diesel buses.
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