Did you know there are currently 1,134 electric school buses (ESBs) on the road today, with a total of 5,986 committed to school districts, tribal governments, and local government agencies? The World Resources Institute does.
WRI’s Electric School Bus Initiative is collecting and electric school bus or ESB data for school districts, policymakers and communities to track and accelerate toward an equitable transition. Its new Electric School Bus Dashboard, published June 22, offers data on various topics relating to ESBs, such as state adoption, school district adoption, equity, and funding.
By clicking on the tabs at the bottom of the dashboard, electric school bus adoption is tracked to the specific school district. For instance, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland is noted as the top district with the most committed ESBs at 336. The dashboard also allows electric school buses to be searched by location, with data that most ESBs are located in suburban areas.
Additionally, the dashboard indicates that most ESBs serve school districts with large makeups of people of color and low-income households, which follows the priority list of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean School Bus Program. The dashboard even breaks down ESBs by OEM, with Blue Bird, The Lion Electric Company and Thomas Built Buses as the top three, in order, so far when it comes to ESB manufacturing.
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However, the dashboard also shows that diesel still makes up 76 percent of overall school buses on the road, with gasoline coming in second at 19 percent. Currently, electric makes up 0.3 percent of the total school buses operating in the U.S., though that percentage increases to 1.2 percent when factoring in all current orders being fulfilled.
The dashboard also breaks down the average age of school buses on the road and highlights states that are still running buses that are model-year 1999 and older, such as Georgia, California and Oklahoma to name a few. the WRI data adds that one-fifth of buses on the road are operating at pre-2010 emissions levels. How the buses were funded, and the various funding sources are also available via the dashboard.
WRI adds that dashboard will be updated every month based on the Electric School Bus Initiatives’ real-time tracking.
