When Miami-Dade County Public Schools laid out a sustainability plan in 2022, it included a heavy emphasis on replacing the district’s nearly 1,000 diesel-fueled school buses with electric-powered buses.
The transition is well underway in the nation’s third-largest school district with more than 340,000 students, according to the Electric School Bus Initiative website. The site reports that since 2023, the school’s fleet has now bumped up to 85 electric buses, including 50 that will be added to the operations starting this school year.
Funding for the buses has been provided through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program as well as the Volkswagen Mitigation Settlement Trust Fund.
Long routes to and from the schools in the Miami area make electric a strong option for the district. With diesel buses consuming about 11 gallons of fuel per trip, according to the site, the district is eliminating almost 2,000 gallons of diesel per year, per bus.
Miami-Dade placed a special emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are generated from transportation, which the article said is the third-largest source of GHGs.
The district uses the electric buses on shorter routes of 50 to 60 miles in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. During the early stages of the program, the district was concerned with range anxiety, but those fears have been minimized as technology improves for electric buses.
The district’s goal of replacing all its diesel buses with electric by 2030 is an ambitious one that will require public-private partnerships with the local utility and other organizations. But Karly Pulido, the district’s sustainability officer, is hopeful that the current momentum continues.
“The future of electric school buses is using it as a powerhouse and not only a transportation device,” Pulido told the site. “(The) resiliency and the capacity of those large batteries should be tapped into.”
Pulido will be part of a panel of Florida facility leaders at NFMT Remix, October 15-16, that will discuss sustainable and net-zero initiatives in the K-12 market. To register for NFMT Remix, please click here.
Dave Lubach is executive editor of the facilities market.
