Red Lake joins a small club: Minnesota school districts with e-buses

Electric buses were a natural fit for Red Lake Schools, which takes pride in a host of environmental initiatives, said Superintendent Tim Lutz.

"We should be leading the way with sustainability, especially when we're in ... a Native nation like Red Lake where they are very concerned about the Earth and the future," Lutz said.

But there were a few hurdles to clear for the district in rural northern Minnesota, including the cost: An electric bus is far more expensive than a gas-powered one. The complexity of charging logistics and limited infrastructure is another reason there are only 10 electric school buses in the state. Similar problems have put Minnesota behind in electric vehicle adoption as a whole.

Red Lake won $790,000 in federal grant money for its two new e-buses.

State and federal officials intent on slashing carbon emissions from Minnesota's transportation sector hope additional grant money will allow more schools to join what is, at least for now, a small club.

School buses are a target for electrification for several reasons, said Pete Wyckoff, assistant commissioner of federal and state initiatives at the Minnesota Department of Commerce.

First, pollution from diesel buses is bad for kids. Buses are also a good starting place for electrifying larger vehicles because they use electricity in a predictable way, Wyckoff said. Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in Minnesota.

But there are often headaches for school districts that are interested, said Duncan McIntyre, CEO of Highland Electric Fleets, a Massachusetts-based electric bus service company that partnered with Red Lake on the project.

The first issue is up-front cost, even if fuel and operation expenses can be lower over time. The second is that adopting electric buses is complicated, he said. It takes new technology, equipment and installation. And it takes planning to handle charging, route mapping and the web of tax credits and grants potentially available to schools.

Willie Larson, business manager at Red Lake Schools, said electric buses can cost $375,000; the last gas-powered bus the district bought cost about $140,000. The district entertained the idea of buying an electric bus on its own, but is on the hook for less than $50,000 because of the grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The two buses will be only a small part of the district's 26-bus fleet, running shorter "in town" routes to help the district better understand range capabilities in a cold environment and other questions with a new technology, Larson said.

Drivers will need to learn the quirks of the buses — like a regenerative braking system that helps the vehicles regain battery.

"It's a mix on the transportation staff," Larson said. "About half of them are thinking, 'Oh this might be kind of fun to give it a try.'" Others are more skeptical.

Financial help is one way to entice more schools to use electric buses, Wyckoff said. As more buses are deployed, he said he hopes up-front costs will drop as with other clean energy infrastructure such as wind turbines and electric cars.

To that end, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency doled out $2.15 million to fund eight electric buses in 2020 and last week announced another $2.1 million for an additional seven buses. That cash came from a larger settlement with Volkswagen.

The MPCA said at the time of the first grant that eight buses collectively could reduce greenhouse gas pollution by 1,120 tons, or the equivalent of removing 244 cars from the road each year during their lifetime.

Yet there's been a learning curve on using those buses, said Shane Monson, superintendent of the Morris Area School District in western Minnesota, which bought two electric buses with the grants.

For instance, they can't use the buses for trips, like to sports games in other rural areas. "If we take the bus to Alexandria, for example, an hour away, there's not a place to charge it in the meantime to get it back," Monson said.

Northstar Bus Lines bought three electric buses with MPCA grants in partnership with the Osseo Area Schools in the northwest metro. The company just won MPCA grants for another three with Osseo, said Nick Martini, senior vice president of operations for Northstar.

Electric vehicles might be easier for Osseo to test out than for a rural district, Martini said. Osseo's geographic footprint is fairly small, allowing condensed routes that typically max out at 80 miles per day.

The e-buses are a small part of a much larger fleet, he said. Osseo runs about 85 full-size buses. And there's more infrastructure available in bigger cities.

"I think suburban and urban is much easier," said Martini, adding that Northstar has seen cost savings because electricity is cheaper than diesel and the buses need less maintenance.

Those advantages make expanding Northstar's electric fleet desirable, said Martini, who was formerly Osseo's transportation coordinator. But up-front costs and unknowns about long-term savings —like how long battery packs might last before needing to be replaced — mean the grant money is critical.

"I don't know that we would jump at this without the grant money, but we're very thankful for the grant money because it's allowing us to temper some of the apprehension because we're just not as deeply as invested as we would be the full cost of a bus," he said. "But the more we're learning, the more comfortable we're getting with it."

The EPA's program has awarded roughly 20% of its $5 billion clean-bus program. Minnesota was not a big winner in that first round of cash, securing just $1.2 million for three electric buses in two school districts. Besides Red Lake, the Ogilvie school district in central Minnesota's Kanabec County got money for one bus.

The border states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin all got more, with Wisconsin securing $12 million.

There are federal tax credits for electric buses approved in the federal Inflation Reduction Act and tax credits for charging infrastructure, Wyckoff said.

Other state efforts are also underway. The DFL-controlled Legislature approved this year $13 million in the state's biennial budget to fund electric buses.

That program is still in early stages, but the money is enough to help districts with somewhere between 35 and 55 buses.

"That's in a Minnesota school bus fleet that's north of 10,000," Wyckoff said. "That's not going to be the be-all-end-all answer. But I think … part of what you need to do is just get the ball rolling."

Xcel, following a trend by utilities across the nation, also has proposed a modest $1.3 million program to test using electric buses as a power source for the grid when they're not being driven.

In Red Lake, Lutz said the underserved population in the area deserves to be on "the cutting edge" as much as anyone else and can be a model for others. The district of 1,500 students lies fully within the Red Lake Nation and 99% of students are Native American.

"It has piqued a lot of interest from local districts," Larson said. "I think they're kind of waiting to see what our take on it is."