SACRAMENTO:
California moved on Friday to eliminate climate-changing fossil fuels from its fleet of 12,000 transit buses, enacting a first-in-the-nation mandate that will increase the number of electric buses on the road.
The
California Air Resources Board voted unanimously to require that all new buses be carbon-free by 2029. Environmental advocates project that the last buses emitting greenhouse gases will be phased out by 2040.
While clean buses cost more than the diesel and natural gas vehicles they will replace, they have lower maintenance and fuel costs too. California has 153 zero-emission buses on the road now with hundreds more on order. Most are electric, though technology also exists for buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
“Every state could do a strategy like this,” said Adrian Martinez, an attorney for
Earthjustice, an environmental legal group. “This is something that California did first because we have major air quality problems, but this is something other states could pursue.”