G3. _ Financing electric buses
The Rocky Mountain Institute’s piece on transitioning to electric buses includes several suggestions about innovative finance mechanisms.
Montgomery County, Maryland recently contracted to lease 300 electric school buses. This avoids the problem of their increased up-front cost, and they expect the cost under the lease to be about what they typically spend on new buses, gasoline and maintenance for diesel buses.
The company that provides New York City’s school bus services is collaborating with an energy management company to use the bus batteries to earn revenue by providing grid management resources. Similar programs are being developed in a number of locations – Dominion Energy’s, in Virginia, which plans to expand to 1,000 school buses with V2Grid capabilities, is the largest so far. (School buses are well suited for this, since they have big batteries, and they sit parked for long periods in the middle of the day and overnight.)
The Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center’s Electric School Bus Education website has a comprehensive set of webinars and handouts to support districts considering transitioning to electric buses.