The Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) was named a Keeling Curve Prize (KCP) finalist by the Global Warming Mitigation Project (GWMP). Each year, the Keeling Curve Prize awards $25,000 to 10 projects across the globe with significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The 2022 prize attracted nearly 400 applications.

CTE is a finalist in the Transport & Mobility category for our approach to the electric school bus market. CTE believes every school district deserves access to technical assistance to help make smart and affordable transitions to electric buses.

The US school bus fleet contains roughly 500,000 vehicles driving a total of four billion miles each year. Ninety-five percent of US school buses are powered by diesel. Alternative fuel options, such as propane, compressed natural gas (CNG), and electric-power, accounted for less than 8% of all school bus sales in 2017. In contrast, approximately 40% of public transit buses run on alternative fuels.

With funding from the Keeling Curve Prize, CTE will be able to assist schools develop tangible step-by-step plans to transition all 500,000 school buses to zero-emission vehicles. If fully realized, replacing all diesel school buses with electric buses would mitigate more than 5.3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year and would avoid large amounts of local particulate matter pollution, which has outsized health impacts on children.

CTE is proud to be among the twenty 2022 Keeling Curve Prize finalists and looks forward to continuing the important work of electrifying the nation's school bus fleet.