Resilience Building in Action

Electrify Complete Fleets

Strategies that Scale School Bus Electrification

Everyday, millions of students ride to school in diesel buses, breathing in exhaust that adversely impacts their physical health. These impacts are disproportionately felt by low-income communities and people of color due to closer proximity to highways and lack of access to healthcare resources and clean technologies. In the United States,  only 1% of all 480,000 school buses are electrified. With support from the Bezos Earth Fund, the World Resources Institute (WRI) developed the Electric School Bus Initiative with the aim of building momentum toward an equitable transition of the U.S. school bus fleet to electric by 2030. The electrification process would not only significantly reduce GHG emissions, but would also bringing health, climate, and economic benefits to children and families across the country while normalizing electric mobility for an entire generation.

RCC partnered with WRI’s Electric School Bus Initiative team as a strategic advisor to identify resilience-building opportunities within the Initiative and to connect these efforts to other climate action programs at the local, state and national levels. The goal was to provide concrete strategies that would unlock a greater pool of funding for the program, while developing a holistic approach to integrate school bus electrification within the broader context of clean energy programs. The RCC team used resilience as a lens to reframe traditional electrification approaches and implementation strategies with an eye to surfacing new, multi-benefit opportunities that can be implemented and scaled in school districts across the nation. 

RCC’s list of recommended actions for the  WRI team stemmed from research on best practices and lessons learned across transportation projects and electric bus initiatives worldwide. Some key strategies included leveraging existing climate action plans, designing support strategies such as Zero Emission Zones, innovating funding models to reduce upfront costs, fostering new partnerships, and developing educational campaigns. RCC and WRI are currently in conversations to identify next steps and chart a path forward for realizing the ESBI team’s goal of electrifying 100% of school buses by 2030.