The Magic School E-Buses, and Garbage Trucks

Buy an E-bus, hire a teacher.

Texas Tribune:

Keith Kimbrough is the first to admit that electric school buses were not an easy sell in the tiny, unincorporated town of Martinsville.

In Martinsville, which sits just outside of Nacogdoches in the Piney Woods of East Texas, pickup trucks are the vehicle of choice, and oil field jobs are prevalent.

Diesel exhaust is not top of mind.

And yet the modest school district here has become the first in the state to entirely replace its diesel school bus fleet with no-emission electric buses. Martinsville ISD applied for and received a $1.6 million grant last year from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Its Clean School Bus Program — funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021 — is investing $5 billion to replace existing school buses with zero-emission and low-emission models across the country, especially in school districts that serve rural areas or low-income students.

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Kimbrough learned about the federal grant program while shopping for a new school bus last year. He faced some skepticism from residents who questioned whether the grant would fully fund the district, but he managed to get the administration on board by mapping out the possible cost savings of switching to electric buses. Kimbrough calculated that the electricity costs of running the buses would be about 70% less than the diesel fuel costs. He anticipates added savings in maintenance costs.

“What I can save in diesel and maintenance, I can almost hire a teacher, or an instructional aid, or give some other benefit to my teachers,” Kimbraugh said. “The cost savings are going to let me better support my kids.”

The up-front costs of electric buses can be cost prohibitive for many districts. A single electric bus costs $400,000, about three to four times more than a diesel bus. The EPA grant fully funded Martinsville ISD’s four new buses along with the charging infrastructure. An electric bus can travel about 100 miles before it needs to be recharged. Kimbrough said his buses run about 60 miles a day, so he is able to just charge them overnight. The district will continue to use diesel buses for longer field trips and sporting events.

CanaryMedia:

A powerful new electric vehicle recently started roaming the leaf-strewn streets of Portland, Oregon. Between its tires sits a hefty 400-kilowatt-hour battery pack. Inside its body is the daily detritus discarded by residents of downtown Portland.

The battery-powered garbage truck is the first of its kind in the state. COR Disposal and Recycling, which owns and operates the vehicle, debuted the truck in early November at a ceremony with the utility Portland General Electric. The zero-emissions model will collect trash in East Portland, an area that’s disproportionately affected by toxic diesel exhaust from garbage trucks, big rigs and other heavy-duty vehicles operating nearby.

“We’re doing our due diligence to make sure that we’re not contaminating the environment anymore,” Alando Simpson, CEO of COR Disposal and Recycling, told Oregon Public Broadcasting earlier this month. He noted that the company primarily works within communities that ​“aren’t getting the resources and investment to decarbonize for the future.”

Although the 66,000-pound trash hauler is unique in Oregon, it’s not the only electric garbage truck to navigate neighborhoods nationwide. Battery-powered models are steadily gaining traction in cities and towns as leaders work to curb greenhouse gas emissions and slash tailpipe pollution from their municipal refuse fleets, which spend many hours driving and idling outside people’s homes to perform a vital service.

As of late June, 48 zero-emissions refuse trucks had been deployed in the United States, according to data provided by Calstart, a clean transportation group. While that represents only a tiny fraction of the country’s tens of thousands of garbage trucks, it’s still more than double the number of battery-powered models deployed at the end of 2021.