U.S Environmental Protection Agency announced competitive awards to 25 school districts, investing $54.06 million to help school districts buy clean buses, help dollars flow back into the classroom  

LANSING, Mich. — Governor Gretchen Whitmer is applauding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement of the winners of the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law?(BIL) Clean School Bus Rebates. In total, 25 Michigan school districts will receive over $54 million in rebates to help transition 138 school buses to electric buses. This investment will save districts money and help dollars flow back into the classroom while increasing air quality, enhancing the electric grid, and fighting climate change.  

“These grants will help Michigan buy and use clean school buses to take kids to school safely and keep the air in and around our schools cleaner, all while powering our economic growth,” said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. “The EPA’s Clean Bus Program will help us upgrade our school bus fleets and build on work being done across the mobility industry to switch to electric. In Michigan we will continue taking action to meet the goals of the MI Healthy Climate Plan I unveiled earlier this year that will lower costs, create jobs, and protect public health while putting us on a clean energy path to carbon neutrality. Let’s keep working together to fund innovative clean energy solutions while prioritizing the health and safety of our kids and communities.” 

Please read more from MLive: Michigan to get 138 new electric school buses with $50M in federal cash - mlive.com 

Vice President Kamala Harris and EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the first round of federal funding for the “clean” school bus program in Seattle on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. 

Harris said as many as 25 million schoolchildren ride school buses each day in the “largest form of mass transit in our country.” All but 5% of those buses are run on diesel and emit harmful carbon emissions, she said. 

Regan said this national “clean” bus program starts the work to build a healthier future, reduce climate pollution, and ensure the clean, breathable air that “all our children deserve.” 

Regular, diesel-powered school buses “spew carcinogenic and climate-warming pollution into the air our kids breathe,” said Molly Rauch, public health policy director for nonprofit?Moms Clean Air Force. 

“It simply doesn’t make sense to send our kids to school on buses that create brain-harming, lung-harming, cancer-causing, climate-harming pollution. Our kids, our bus drivers, and our communities deserve better,” she said. 

School districts that will receive funding, include:

This federal investment builds on Michigan’s successful Fuel Transformation Program that provided $30 million to help school districts purchase 17 electric school buses and over 300 buses powered by clean fuels.?? 

For more information about the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program, please visit: https://www.epa.gov/cleanschoolbus.