New Electric School Buses in Colorado Provide Safer, Cleaner, Cheaper Rides | Article

In two rural towns nestled in the Colorado mountains, Durango and Kremmling, children enjoy a fume-free ride to school in their brand-new electric school buses. Two rural electric cooperatives (co-ops) in Colorado that together serve about 52,000 people worked with local school districts to help them obtain—at no cost to the districts—two electric school buses to replace their dirty diesel buses.

These two rural utilities, Mountain Parks Electric and La Plata Electric Association, understand the economic, health, and environmental value that electric school buses bring to their communities. Because electric co-ops are nonprofits owned by their ratepaying members, it is in their best interest to look after the health of their members by helping the school districts that they serve switch to electric buses and reduce harmful emissions. There are almost half a million school buses in the United States transporting about 25 million children to and from school. Nearly all of them are diesel buses spewing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and in the interior of the buses themselves. According to the World Resources Institute, the inside of diesel school buses poses a major health threat for students. Pollution inside these vehicles can be as much as 10 times higher than ambient levels. Exposure to higher levels of air pollution is associated with increased asthma rates, reduced lung development in children, and reduced academic abilities.

The recently enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (P.L. 117-58) acknowledges that electrifying all the school buses in the country would be beneficial for our children’s health and for the climate. The law commits at least $2.5 billion to start the process. Distributed equally over five years beginning in 2022, these funds will help electrify 11,000 buses. Another $2.5 billion is allocated for “low-emission buses,” including electric school buses but also hybrids and natural gas-powered buses, with individual states choosing which kind is purchased. This is a great step towards full electrification, but there is still a long way to go, as fewer than one percent of all buses are currently electric. To help co-ops and rural school districts electrify their school fleets, the Beneficial Electrification League—of which EESI is a member—has recently launched the electric school bus initiative. With the new infrastructure law and other initiatives, school districts nationwide, particularly those in rural areas, can begin to replace hazardous, carbon-emitting school buses with clean, safe, zero-emission electric school buses.

Electric school bus in Kremmling, Colorado. Photo Credit: Mountain Parks Electric

Mountain Parks Electric partnered with the West Grand School District in Kremmling, Colorado—which is served by the co-op—to fund an electric school bus at no cost to the school district. With funds from the Regional Air Quality Council Alt Fuels Colorado program and from unused capital credits from co-op members, the electric school bus became a reality in March 2021. To pay for the charging station, Mountain Parks used a portion of the $10 million zero-interest loan that the co-op secured from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Energy Savings Program (RESP). The electric school bus, which cost $400,000, or nearly twice the cost of a diesel bus, was at the time the first one in Colorado. Since its purchase, the bus has run regular school bus routes as well as shuttled students to sports games along mountainous roads.

“The electric school bus has great torque and performs well in cold weather climates, like the one that we experience around Granby and Grand Lake (Colorado), where the headquarters of Mountain Parks are located,” said Chris Michalowski, Mountain Park Electric's energy manager. “Surprisingly, the bus works in the steep mountain passes much better than a traditional diesel bus, which has prompted the school district to ask us to help them fund more electric school buses.”

Getting to this point has not been an easy process. When Mountain Parks first presented the opportunity to the school district, there was a lot of hesitation regarding how these buses could work on the school routes given the cold weather and the mountainous area. The co-op worked to create a trusting relationship with the West Grand School District Board.

“There were a lot of conversations with school directors about electrifying school buses and how to finance them,” said Michalowski. “Most of the people on the school board wanted the best for their students, but wanted to make sure everything worked.”

After several presentations to the school board, Mountain Parks was able to convince West Grand to take the first steps toward purchasing an electric school bus. The co-op took up the responsibility of researching what infrastructure and funding was needed. The grant from the Regional Air Quality Council helped overcome the initial upfront costs, which was helpful in getting buy-in from the school district. Although the upfront cost of an electric school bus is higher than that of a diesel bus, the operation and maintenance costs are much lower. The cost of fueling the West Grand electric school bus is about $0.16 per mile versus about $0.43 per mile for a comparable diesel bus. This means that operating an electric school bus is almost three times cheaper than operating a diesel bus. Because an electric bus has a 20-year expected lifetime, the operating and maintenance savings can nearly compensate for the higher upfront costs. An electric bus can also benefit from more consistent electricity prices compared to more volatile diesel prices.

Since the introduction of the electric school buses, there has been much discussion between West Grand and other schools interested in these buses. Hopefully, this will create a “domino effect” to electrify school bus fleets in the district and around the state, resulting in lower carbon emissions and improved health conditions for the students and their rural communities.

Electric school bus and charging station in Durango, Colorado. Photo Credit: La Plata Electric Association

Another co-op in Colorado, La Plata Electric Association, worked with its local school district, the Durango School District, to also secure a grant from the Regional Air Quality Council. Using $210,000 in grants plus internal utility funds, the co-op fully funded a Blue Bird electric school bus—and a bidirectional charging station—to replace a polluting diesel bus.

“An electric school bus is essentially a big battery device on wheels that can be linked as an energy asset to our power grid,” said Dominic May, the energy resource program manager at La Plata Electric. “Through our pilot bus program, we can control the charging and dispatching of the battery throughout the day, allowing for peak shaving capabilities, which saves us money.”

Adding a bidirectional or vehicle-to-grid charging station to the electric school bus offered additional savings for both the co-op and the school district. A bidirectional, or two-way charging station, allows for energy to flow either to the vehicle being charged or back to the grid during periods when the vehicle is in the bus depot and electricity demand is high. Using a regular and controlled charging schedule, the school bus battery can be charged at the most optimal times. For example, the bus can be plugged in at night, when the cost of electricity is cheaper, providing energy and monetary savings for both the co-op and the school district.

La Plata Electric uses the school bus battery to store energy from the grid when it is cheapest, and then releases it when it is most expensive, usually during the afternoon hours. Because the co-op is releasing stored energy back to the grid during peak demand hours, it avoids paying higher rates for the power from Tri-State Electric Cooperative, the co-op power provider. This allows the co-op to shave the expensive “energy peak” and thereby save money.

“The co-op can save enough money—over five years—to cover for the delta between the cost of an electric school bus and a diesel bus, or $140,000, plus the cost of a bidirectional charging station,” said May. “Because the high upfront cost of electric school buses is a large barrier for school districts to invest in them, using the bus battery [in this way] can create a sustainable financing program to fund an electric school bus in five years without the need for grants.”

Along with the energy and monetary savings that an electric school bus can provide to a utility and to a school district, both May and Michalowski pointed out the myriad environmental, air quality, health, and equity benefits that also come with them. Mountain Park Electric has seen a decrease in both noise pollution and diesel pollution after switching to the electric school bus, making it a better environment for both the children and the driver.

“The amount of pollution that diesel buses emit is a large threat to our environment as well as to the children who are directly exposed to the exhaust fumes,” said Michalowski.

“Replacing polluting diesel school buses with clean electric ones helps address equity and economic disparities for our lower-income students in the rural areas that the co-op serves,” said May.

Authors: Roshni Vora and Miguel Yañez-Barnuevo