Environmental group pushing for electric school buses in city, province

A local environmental group is pushing to shift the city's school bus fleets from diesel to electric.

Earlier this month, Ecology Ottawa released a report making the case for the change, raising the health and climate change implications of keeping the fleet running on fossil fuel.

Cheryl Randall, the group's climate change campaign organizer, said Ecology Ottawa started an air quality monitoring program in 2020 and found lower socioeconomic groups faced increased risk to their health because of higher emissions exposure.

"The list of negative health impacts from diesel emissions is unbelievably long," she told on CBC's All In A Day, adding Health Canada has done extensive research on the effects of diesel emissions on children.

It's a really significant eradication that we could make if we start the transition.- Cheryl Randall, Ecology Ottawa

"Children, because of their, you know, smaller stature, less developed respiratory systems, they're particularly vulnerable as a group."

Randall said diesel emissions can cause cancer, have been linked to Parkinson's disease, respiratory problems for children and can impair cognitive development.

She pointed to the city's decision to buy 350 electric buses for its transit fleet over the next three years as evidence that this is the direction all transportation should be going in, especially because transportation makes up 42 per cent of the city's greenhouse gas emissions.

Big change, big impact

Randall said making the switch from diesel to electric would save "something in the region of" 17 to 20 tonnes of carbon per bus per year.

So if Ontario switched all of its 20,000 diesel buses to electric, it would take 340,000 tonnes of carbon emissions out of the picture each year, she said. 

"It's a really significant eradication that we could make if we start the transition," Randall said.

The province started a pilot program with 13 electric school buses in 2017 but when the Progressive Conservative government took power the next year it scrapped the program.

Randall said when the province ended the pilot it also stopped collecting data.

"It essentially meant that there was no data collected by the province from those buses that are still running now," she said.

"It's a really unfortunate decision because the money had already been spent and if they'd kept the pilot going would at least have the the data."

The main obstacle to widespread adoption of electric buses, Randall said, is they have a higher up-front cost than diesel buses.

She said a federal program that provides 50 per cent of the cost of a bus and the charging infrastructure could be leveraged, but it will require provincial support.

"Where you look across the rest of the country, the provinces where this acceleration has already occurred have all had provincial support," she said.

Randall said Ecology Ottawa is going to lobby the Ontario Ministry of Transportation to have it provide funding.