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Virginia to invest $20M to accelerate deployment of electric school buses

Virginia is planning to use $20 million from Volkswagen AG's environmental mitigation trust to accelerate the deployment of electric school buses across the state.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced the initiative during a Sept. 24 Climate Week NYC event hosted by the United States Climate Alliance.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, in partnership with the Department of Education, will administer the application process for public school districts that can apply for the funding starting in early 2020. Applications for electric school buses will be prioritized over propane school buses.

Up to $265,000 may be reimbursed to public school districts that will purchase an all-electric school bus and charging infrastructure, according to a Sept. 24 news release. The buses must have a minimum range of 100 miles. Meanwhile, up to $20,000 may be reimbursed to the districts for the purchase of a propane bus of model year 1997 or older, only if acquiring an electric school bus is not feasible.

"Each electric school bus can save districts nearly $2,000 a year in fuel and $4,400 a year in reduced maintenance costs, saving tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a bus," said Education Secretary Atif Qarni in a news release.

Aside from monetary savings, replacing 75 buses that run on diesel with all-electric school buses will result in a lifetime savings of 670,000 pounds nitrogen oxide, approximately 41,000 pounds of particulate matter population, and 36 million pounds of greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions.

Currently, almost all of Virginia's school buses run on diesel and about 3,500 buses are older than 10 years.

The initiative is the third funding that Virginia announced it has allocated from its $93.6 million share of Volkswagen's $2.9 billion environmental mitigation trust tied to a diesel emissions fraud scandal.

In 2018, Northam announced the allocation of $14 million to develop the state's electric vehicle charging network and an additional $14 million for the deployment of electric transit buses.