FACT BRIEF

Can the president drive a decision to replace the nation's fleet of school buses?

Monday, July 13, 2020

By Devin Stewart

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YES

School buses are bought by local officials, but the federal government has many tools to influence their choices, from the President's "bully pulpit" to specific funding and incentives. For instance, under 2010 legislation the federal Environmental Protection Agency has so far funded the retrofitting of 2,000 older buses to reduce emissions.

The Biden campaign has outlined bigger ambitions, calling for "transitioning the entire fleet of 500,000 school buses to American-made, zero-emission alternatives within five years." It did not provide details about funding or structure of the program, but the scale would imply a large expansion of federal efforts.

The EPA program cost $10 million in 2019. A California program spent $70 million in 2019 to replace 200 aging buses with all-electric models.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

JoeBiden.com: Task force recommendations

EPA: School bus rebates under the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act

State of California: Energy commission awards $70 million to replace 200 diesel school buses

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Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

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Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.