Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday visited a school in Fairfax, Virginia to announce the $500 million 2022 Clean School Bus Rebates program intended to help school districts purchase buses with low or zero carbon emissions.
“Yellow school buses are our nation’s largest form of mass transit. Every day in our country more than 25 million children ride to and from school on our nation’s fleet of school buses,” Harris said.
Harris said that 95 percent of these buses run on diesel fuel, “a poison” that can cause headaches, nausea and worsen respiratory conditions.
“If your child rides the bus half an hour to school and half an hour back everyday from the first day of kindergarten to high school graduation, they will experience the equivalent of 90 full days of exposure to diesel exhaust,” Harris said.
The rebates are only one part of the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program which will use $5 billion over the next five years to replace school buses that use fossil fuels such as diesel.
Harris said switching from diesel to zero emission engines would also lessen the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.
