The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has ordered the state’s bus agencies to switch to entirely emissions-free vehicles within 20 years, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Sunday, as part of a larger overall push to push back against Republicans’ efforts on the national front to undermine state emissions regulations.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has ordered the state’s bus agencies to switch to entirely emissions-free vehicles within 20 years, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Sunday, as part of a larger overall push to push back against Republicans’ efforts on the national front to undermine state emissions regulations.
The policy is the first of its kind in the country and was approved by a unanimous vote on Dec. 14th. Per the Chronicle, the initiative would “prohibit the purchase of any new gas- or diesel-powered public transit buses by 2029 and require all buses to be emission-free by 2040. It is the first policy in the country to require electrification of a state’s entire public transit fleet.”
Under the new rules, the Chronicle wrote, the emissions-free buses would replace an estimated 14,000 gas-fueled buses currently on California roads over the next two decades, reducing carbon emissions by an estimated one million metric tons by 2040. That amount of time is likely to be necessary for state agencies and zero-emissions vehicle manufacturers to build and put into operation enough vehicles, the paper added, though with a roughly 12-year lifespan for the current ones there is still likely to be future generations of fossil fuel-guzzling buses on the road.
