SCHOOL BUSES—MASSIVE CARBON FOOTPRINT, POLLUTION SOURCE AND HIGH COSTS—ELECTRIFY

Electrifying school buses would save an enormous sum of money, would reduce pollution, would cut carbon emissions and would reduce exposure of our children to diesel fumes.

School bus electrification should be one of our nation’s priorities.

There are roughly 16,000 school districts in the USA according to the US Census bureau as of 2002. Each of these districts has to transport students who live further that walking distance to their  classes.  Today even inner city schools these days have their big yellow busses rumbling down the crowded streets spewing clouds of black smoke and tons of C02..

Transporting school kids by bus is our nation’s largest mass transportation system with about 480,000 big yellow school buses traveling the nation’s roads every school day of the year.  About 95% of the buses (as of the early 2000s) run  on diesel  fuel.  In 2002 the American School Bus Council estimated that there were over 50 million daily passenger journeys by school buses. They also indicate that the  average school bus trip is about five miles and  as a result  our nation’s school kids travel approximately 260 million miles every day!  While city transit buses and other transport systems operate all year long school buses operate only 180 days per year on average vs 365 days a year for transit systems.

School buses —the more efficient ones—can average about 9 miles per gallon of diesel fuel.  The average cost to run one bus (of the most efficient type)  per year is often estimated at about $4-5,000 per year.  So here is where we can make a difference in carbon footprint and cost.

 Electric school buses could be fitted with roof top solar panels.  Their long flat roofs are ideal for solar panels  The panels would be exposed to solar energy most of the time.  When not in use buses are parked in school bus parking lots where again they are often exposed to solar energy.   The average daily distance travel for each bus is about five miles on each trip. This also plays into the strengths of  electric solar powered vehicles.

The first full size electric model was produced by Lion Bus Co in 2015 and today most of manufactures now produce a electric models,  though they are often about twice the cost of diesel   models. There seems to be no evidence that any of these new electric models are powered by solar. But perhaps that will change.

Let’s  do the math.

Four hundred eighty thousand (480,000)  school buses traveling about 5 miles average each day for 180 days of the year and each burning  an average on one gallon every  9 miles gives the following results:

             480,000 buses X 5 miles X 180 days= 432,000,000 bus-miles per year

Traveling that distance at 9 miles per gallon gives:

          432,000,000 / 9 miles per gallon= 48,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel burned per year .

What about cost ?  At $3.17 per gallon (today October 2019)  Scool bus operation costs the nations schools about:  ($3.17 X 48,000,00 = 152,160,000).

Or about $152,000,000 dollars to transport our nation’s school kids. Solar power would cost nothing.

Bad news is that diesel fuel prices are rising are are expected to continue to rise because of higher demand in the overall world economy.  When the economy grows business demands rise for diesel. Deisel is used in ocean liners and transport ships, earth moving machinery, freight (trucks) and other transport vehicles.  those uses are expected to rise and thus the costs to school districts will rise too.

Carbon footprint.  For each gallon of diesel fuel burned we generate about 22.4 pounds of carbon dioxide gas.  That is the gas that tends to increase the temperature of the lower part of the atmosphere causing global warming or weather intensification.

Our school bus system produces more that 1billion pounds of CO2 gas per year as a global warming burden to our atmosphere.

Since we use 48,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel each year to fuel our buses and each gallon of diesel dumps 22.4 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air

     (48,000,000 X 22.4 pounds= 1,075,200,000) or more than one billion pounds of greenhouse carbon didoxide gas each year.

Atmospheric scientists insist that we must reduce our carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas )emissions to control global warming.  The use of diesel fuel in school buses are a significant contributor.  We can easily  reduce the carbon footprint of transporting children to school to near zero by converting to solar powered electric buses.

Why don’t we do this?  It makes so mush sense.

Lower green house gases, cheaper over the long run, clear air for kids to breath its a no brainer—safer all over better.