The Environmental Protection Agency has released the second round of federal funds, a total of $1 billion, from the Clean School Bus Program to help U.S. school districts transition to alternative fuel buses. Georgia continues to benefit from the program in more ways than one.
The announcement of the new funds took the form of a press-event-as-road trip for EPA Administrator Michael Regan who cut a track that began at Stone Mountain Middle School in Dekalb County and ended at the Blue Bird Manufacturing bus factory in the city of Fort Valley in central Georgia.
After his tour of the Blue Bird EV bus production line Monday, Regan praised the agency’s relationship with the factory and the burgeoning EV bus marketplace.
“What we're doing is a public private partnership to help spur that market,” Regan said. “More buses lead to more sales, leads to economic growth, job creation. Not to mention that these buses are cleaner so our children are not breathing that dirty diesel air. You have less asthma attacks, less respiratory distress.”
The bus program is a $5 billion expenditure of the federal Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act.
Both Dekalb County Schools and Clayton County Schools received grants in excess of $20 million, which both districts plan on using to purchase 50 electric school buses.
Other grant-winning districts planning on EV buses include Richmond County, Bibb County and Carrollton City Schools.
But the majority of the planned purchases through the just over $141 million in total grants across a dozen districts are for propane-powered buses. That’s the case for Floyd County Schools, slated for 61 of the buses which, while still powered by a fossil fuel, have tailpipe emissions far less harmful to air quality than diesel buses.
Fort Valley-headquartered Blue Bird Manufacturing makes both propane and electric buses and has also found a role for itself as a facilitator between the EPA and school districts around the country wary of the red tape around securing a grant on their own.
Blue Bird has so far landed about $170 million of direct program grants. While company CEO Phil Horlock told Regan the company can put together three or four bus EV chassis a day, he also said Blue Bird has a backlog of 600 orders to work through.
"Battery supplies are really struggling to keep up with us," Horlock said.
The new announcement brings total Clean School Bus Program spending in Georgia to about $192 million in 27 school districts.
The next round of program funding is scheduled to be announced in April.
