California is charging ahead with clean transportation. Last week, the state awarded $500 million for educational agencies to buy zero-emission school buses and chargers through ZESBI.

The Zero-Emissions School Bus and Infrastructure (ZESBI) project selected 133 educational agencies to receive 1,000 zero-emission school buses and related charging infrastructure to school districts and other educational entities. The grants are expected to be finalized by the end of the year. 

A map of awardees can be viewed online.

Awardees will receive up to $375,000 to replace internal combustion engine school buses with zero-emission vehicles and awards up to $95,000 per school bus to purchase and install associated charging infrastructure. They must scrap one old internal combustion engine school bus for every new school bus purchased. 

The incentive program is a collaboration between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the California Energy Commission (CEC), and is administered by CALSTART. 

“Cleaning up the state’s school bus fleet is central to California’s efforts to provide clean transportation in priority communities that are disproportionately hurt by air pollution,” said CARB Chair Liane Randolph. “The vast majority of these grants will go to local educational agencies that serve these communities.” 

“California has set important benchmarks for removing internal combustion vehicles from our roads and replacing them with clean transportation,” said CEC Chair David Hochschild. “CEC is helping school districts move in that direction by funding ZESBI.” 

Zero-emission school buses play a key role in California’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. In the state, all school bus purchases made by school districts must be zero-emission technology by 2035, with an extension until 2045 for frontier local educational agencies in rural communities. 

To date, California has provided more than $1.3 billion in incentives to school districts, funding more than 2,300 zero-emission school buses, of which 1,100 are already in use. Over 70% of the zero-emission school buses in use are in the state’s most pollution-burdened communities. More than 300 California school districts and local education agencies have purchased at least one zero-emission school bus. 

The school buses in this round of grants are expected to reduce 18,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, equivalent to taking more than 4,000 cars off the road for a year, according to CARB.