What will it take for Virginia to get all-electric school buses?

School buses don’t often register in big discussions about climate change, but switching fleets from diesel to electric could offer big gains in the quest to reduce carbon emissions from transportation.

In Virginia this year, lawmakers are reviewing just how significant the climate and public health impacts would be if the state swapped its current school buses for all-electric alternatives—and what it would take to get that done.

The task is a big one: Virginia has nearly 17,000 school buses in operation around the state. The potential rewards are big, too: Electrifying the fleet would result in nearly 144,600 metric tons of greenhouse gases avoided per year—the equivalent of taking 27,851 cars off the road. The issue has been heating up in New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Massachusetts, and even Alabama, but Virginia is the first state to look at electrification at the state level.

Transportation contributes 46 percent of the state’s total emissions, and finding answers to cleaning and greening the way Virginians get around is becoming ever more pressing. That’s what motivated Delegate Mark Keam to wade into this issue. “This is a relatively easy way to take the first bite at the apple to start transitioning our full fleets of vehicles away from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” he said. A coalition of environmentalists, parent activists, and Dominion Energy are supporting the push.

Advocates say cleaner air isn’t the only direct benefit of electrifying school buses. School buses spend a lot of time not doing anything at all. If they’re electrified, a fully charged bus that’s sitting idle could serve as a giant backup battery if needed by utilities, residents, or schools.

“Electric school buses are a climate solution twice over,” said Joe Rupp, a climate advocate at Environment Virginia. “They reduce emissions from the transportation sector and they increase battery storage capacity that can help utilities meet demand peaks without needing to build more dirty gas plants.”

The fact that times of peak electric demand such as the middle of the summer and evenings coincide with periods during which school buses go unused makes the pairing of the two goals all the more convenient. Depending on the terms of the agreements between utilities and school districts, school bus electrification appears to be the rare policy win-win.

Cleaner air for kids

Public health arguments have played a significant role in swaying legislators this session. After learning of pilot projects in several western states, Delegate Kaye Kory introduced her own bill on the matter this session.

“Why now is obvious: The dangers to children’s health posed by diesel-fueled school buses are well-documented,” she said. “Even the EPA is encouraging cleaner school buses.”

After the Fairfax County chapter of Mothers Out Front brought the issue to Keam’s attention, he began to view the matter as equally urgent.

“I have two kids, one with severe allergies and seasonal asthma. I never put two and two together about the health impacts of using diesel school buses,” he said. “We’re exposing a lot of kids to one of the most toxic fuels on the roadway: diesel.”

Pollution from diesel vehicles can lead to decreased lung function, respiratory tract inflammation and irritation, not to mention aggravated asthma. In 2016 the Virginia Department of Health released a study outlining the Commonwealth’s abnormally high prevalence of asthma. More than 13% of state residents will be afflicted with the ailment over the course of their lifetimes. Just five years ago Richmond ranked the second worst city in the nation for asthma. Other studies have even shown that the air quality inside diesel school buses is generally five to 10 times worse than the air outside them.

The legislative vehicles

While there’s general agreement on the need to address this problem, that doesn’t mean legislators are united on the best approach.

The devil is in the details, and with a price tag of $370,000 per electric school bus, there are a lot of details to take care of. Among a Democratic caucus with dramatically divided views on Dominion Energy’s role in the state, any issue that requires the involvement of the utility was bound to elicit starkly different proposals:

The hybrid option

Of the three bills introduced this session, SB988 from Senator Louise Lucas takes the most lenient approach to Virginia’s energy monopoly. Her bill contains a loose definition of an electric school bus, leaving the door open to the possibility of hybrids entering the fleet. Furthermore, Sen. Lucas’ proposal grants utilities such as Dominion expansive leeway to create and design electric bus programs and provides highly specific authority to ensure utilities recover their costs.

The utility option

Delegate Kory’s HB75 calls for utilities to cover the roughly $275,000 difference in cost between classic diesel buses and the electric school bus and associated charging infrastructure. School districts would own the buses, while utilities would recover their costs by increasing base rates. Some advocates grumble that Kory’s bill caps the buses replaced at just 200 per year. Others disagree that it allows utilities to choose which school districts to provide E-buses to based on their value to grid stabilization, rather than targeting districts with the worst air quality.

Kory says her proposal makes a modest yet practical step in the right direction.

“Implementing a pilot program with Dominion Power to replace diesel-fueled school buses with electric school buses is very reasonable,” she said. “Dominion has the resources easily available to assist school systems in building electric school bus fleets, the business interest in expanding the electric vehicle market, and a strong interest in positive public relations.”

The state option

Keam’s state-centric proposal died in the House Appropriations Committee last week. Had it lived, HB1140 would have created a competitive block grant program administered by Virginia’s Department of Education. The bill aimed for school districts to transition all their buses to electric by 2030. It prioritized areas that would enjoy the greatest cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution—a big selling point for climate activists—but the bill’s large price tag ultimately proved its downfall.

What will Virginia do?

The three proposals were vigorously debated and weighed against each other this session, but Keam sees the effort as collaborative rather than competitive. “We’re talking about thousands of buses,” he said. “There’s no program that’s going to be able to fund all of it, so I think we need many different approaches to solve this problem.

Regardless of which bills pass out of the legislature, Governor Ralph Northam has already announced that $20 million in grant funding from the Volkswagen settlement will go toward building out the state’s electric school bus fleet.

That may sound like a lot of money, but it would only cover the $275,000 cost difference between diesel and E-buses for 72 out of the state’s 17,000 school buses. How Virginia will come up with the money to transition all the rest remains in the hands of lawmakers.