The finding comes as part of the annual State Transportation Electrification Scorecard from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).
New York, which operates some 45,000 school buses, the most in the nation, will require that all school bus purchases be zero emission by 2027, and all school buses in operation must be zero emission by 2035, said Adam Ruder, assistant director with the clean transportation group within the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
“This is a huge undertaking,” said Ruder, explaining the initiative during a June 28 webinar about the scorecard hosted by ACEEE.
The ACEEE electrification scorecard evaluates states along several metrics like planning, incentives, electric grid optimization and transportation system efficiency to better understand how effectively the state is transitioning its transportation sector toward EVs. The top five states in the 2023 scorecard are California, New York, Colorado, Massachusetts and Vermont.
“The top 10 in this addition is largely the same, but with some reshuffling,” said Peter Huether, senior transportation research associate at ACEEE, noting that the West Coast and the Northeast continue to lead the nation in policies and other efforts to encourage EV adoption in the light-duty as well as medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sectors.
“There’s considerable room for improvement across the board, but states have a diverse set of policy actions to choose from. There’s something every state can work on, and there’s a policy action for every state,” said Huether.
New York is notable in that the state has only about 150,000 light-duty EVs on the roads — a low number compared to California — but has the most energy-efficient transportation system in the country, largely due to its comprehensive transit system.
California continues to be the outlying leader in the transition to EVs. Some 21 percent of new-car sales were electric this year. Forty percent of ZEVs sold in the United States are sold in the state.
This evolution has put the state on course to meet its larger ZEV goals such as a requirement that all new-car sales be zero emission by 2035, and all heavy-duty vehicles be zero emission by 2045.
“Increasing and accelerating the shift to zero-emission transportation systems requires an organized and collaborative and cost-cutting approach,” said Jennifer Kalafut, senior manager for energy efficiency and transportation electrification at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
The move to electrify the nation’s nearly 500,000 school buses is aided, in part, from significant grant funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as state efforts like $500 million in voter-approved funding in New York.
“This is going to help us get a lot of school buses on the road, and importantly, get school bus fleets prepared for this transition,” said Ruder, who added the state will offer technical and other assistance to enable this transition. “We’re really excited about where things are headed, and working with other states.”
