Daily Herald opinion: Valuable, but still early, lessons: There’s hope in data from electric school buses, but much to learn

Suburban school districts committing to adding electric buses to their fleets are setting the stage for what could be a promising future in the way we transport our kids to school. But it is important to temper our excitement about the prospects of mass conversions of school buses to clean, renewable energy with realistic expectations for the challenges of getting there.

So far, the upfront costs, the uncertainty of continued grant money and the need for infrastructure — as in easily available charging stations — represent obstacles that only the most committed and well-prepared districts may be able to overcome in the short term. Fortunately, as our Steve Zalusky reported on Monday, such districts exist and are wading into these waters. The data they collect over time will inform how other districts approach them.

Illinois school districts and transportation companies have used grants and incentives to buy about 700 electric school buses, among them River Trails District 26 in Mount Prospect and Huntley Community Unit District 158, and some districts, like Naperville Unit District 203, have had the resources to launch EV experiments on their own.

That electric buses are a genuine good, is obvious. The overall environmental benefits to congested urban areas are well-documented. Chicago, one of a half-dozen U.S. cities leading the way to electrification, aims to convert its roughly 1,900-bus fleet to electric by 2040, focusing its first arrivals on routes in highly polluted neighborhoods.

Here in the suburbs, children and drivers on electric buses benefit from not having to breathe in diesel fumes for long periods of time on the ride to school. Some students are on buses for an hour or more each day, and young children have a faster breathing rate than adults, meaning they inhale more of the fumes.

Moreover, electric buses are significantly quieter, which means drivers have less din to contend with as they monitor their charges on trips to and from school; i.e., the environment is safer for everyone aboard, as well as for all of us outside the bus.

And while electric buses are expensive to buy, they are cheaper to maintain and operate. The CTA calculates that electric buses cost $2.01 per mile to run, compared to $3.08 for diesel buses.

Whether the timing of electric buses at each suburban school district is right is the question. At approximately $350,000 each, electric buses cost about three times the price of a diesel-powered bus. Most school districts using them benefited from grants and incentives — and grants can be notoriously unreliable in the long run. A new administration committed to fossil fuels takes over in Washington next week, and proponents of electric buses recognize federal-based grants may be short-lived.

As well, electric buses are currently only a small part of a district's overall fleet. Maintaining them requires expertise, which costs money. Some of the awarded grant money will go toward charging stations, to ensure electric buses don’t run out of juice and strand busloads of kids.

Interestingly, Palatine Township Elementary District 15 is taking a different route. It recently committed to leasing five electric buses over 12 years from Massachusetts-based Highland Electric Fleets, a company well-versed in electric buses and one of the first companies to employ the “vehicle to grid” concept, in which school buses that sit idle 75% to 85% of the time are put to work generating power that is funneled back to the utility, making money for the buses' owners.

District 15 school board President Lisa Szczupaj said the $2.2 million in grant funding was a factor in their decision to “dip our toes in the water,” testing if the electric bus concept will work. District 15 will also contribute $1.2 million of its own money.

It will be interesting to see in the long run if buying or leasing proves to be the better option. That is only one of many questions these early adopters will help answer for everyone else. It may take some time before all the answers are clear, but when they are, the benefits will extend both to the students the buses carry, the communities in which they operate and the climate we all share.