The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Monday it is releasing some $1.7 billion in grants to fund new electric and low-emission buses across the country.
The taxpayer dollars come from the 2021 infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden, AP reports, with the money going to transit projects in 46 states and territories.
“Every day, millions of Americans climb aboard over 60,000 buses to get to work, to school, doctor’s appointments, everywhere they need to be,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a call with reporters.
“These are unprecedented levels of investment when it comes to putting modern cleaner buses on the road.”
This is not the first time this administration has professed a love for electric buses, as Breitbart News reported, with Biden claiming back in 2021 “Diesel [from school buses] pollutes the air … and causes our students to miss school.”
FLASHBACK: Joe Biden Blames Diesel Buses for Causing Students to Miss School
Then 12 months later Vice President Kamala Harris added her voice to the claim telectric buses are the way of the transportation future.
“Today, 95 percent of our school buses are fueled with diesel fuel, which contributes to very serious conditions that are about health and about the ability to learn,” she said during remarks in Seattle, referring to the pollution caused by school buses.
The vice president spoke about school buses at an event promoting Biden’s attempt to replace diesel powered school buses with electric ones.
Harris claimed electric school buses represented everything the Biden administration stood for, including saving the planet from global warming.
“We owe it to our children to, right now, take these issues very seriously. The clock is ticking loudly,” she said. “We are witnessing, around our country and around the world, the effects of extreme climate.”
Monday’s announcement covers the second round of grants for electric buses and supporting infrastructure, the AP report sets out.
All told, the U.S. has invested a total of $3.3 billion in the projects so far. Government officials expect to award roughly $5 billion more over the next three years.
The Seattle area will be getting $33.5 million to purchase 30 electric battery buses and chargers.
Workers convert a diesel school bus into an electric school bus at the Unique Electric Solutions facility in Holbrook, New York, US, on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty)
The Washington, DC, transit authority will use $104 million to make a bus garage an electric facility and buy roughly 100 electric battery buses.
Money also is going outside of major U.S. cities, with Iowa City, Iowa, and the Seneca Nation in Western New York also receiving grants to embrace electric buses and low emission vehicles.