While the Biden administration’s top brass this week hailed a burst of billions of dollars for the purchase of new electric school buses to reduce pollution, a separate — and potentially conflicting — EPA program is still being funneled significant funding.
Under a long-standing program beloved by Congress, EPA has previously helped underwrite the purchase of new diesel school buses that, while cleaner burning than their predecessors, still release pollutants linked to asthma attacks and other health problems.
From 2008 through 2018, EPA received more than $800 million in Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) appropriations to replace or retrofit older diesel-fueled equipment to cut emissions, according to a recent report to Congress.
Of the projects funded with grants or rebates, the single largest share, 43 percent, was for school buses, the report said, although other EPA figures don’t furnish a clear accounting of the number of new buses that ran on diesel, as opposed to models powered by electricity or cleaner-burning fuels like propane.