Why can't more Canadian kids ride electric school buses?

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I’m Nick Logan and I hope you're ready to roll! I had the chance to take a ride on an electric school bus in Richmond, B.C., while mapping out the state of school bus electrification across Canada for a recent episode of What On Earth.

This week:

Most school buses on the roads in Canada are still powered by diesel fuel and, like all other combustion engine vehicles, they are a contributor of climate-harming greenhouse gas emissions. 

According to the Pembina Institute, a single diesel school bus can produce the equivalent of 27 tonnes of carbon emissions a year — six times more than your average car. And that's to say nothing of the reported health effects of diesel fumes. 

But Milo Boily's bus is different: it's electric. 

"At first, we were all kind of reluctant about the electric buses. But once you got to know it, you realize it's quieter. It actually has more power," said Boily, a school bus driver in Richmond, B.C. 

He likes how smoothly it drives and handles turns. He says it's really good on hills and that he barely has to use the brake to slow down.

On top of that, he says the battery range is good and an overnight charge gets him through the day, although he may have to give the battery some extra juice if he's taking students on a longer field trip.

"Once you start driving them, you don't want to go back after," he said.

Electric battery-powered buses are gaining traction in parts of the country, but there's still a long way to go on the electrification journey, according to a recent report card from the Electric School Bus Alliance of Canada. 

It was aimed at illustrating how well provinces are doing at electrifying their school bus fleets, not only in terms of how many of the vehicles are in use but also the availability of charging infrastructure, as well as the policies and financial incentives they have implemented. 

Quebec and British Columbia — two provinces that already lead in adoption and sale of electric vehicles — were among the top three for electric school buses.

Quebec had more than 1,800 electric school buses on the road as of the end of last year, according to the provincial government, accounting for about 15 per cent of the province’s total fleet, while B.C. Is at about five per cent with 144 electric school buses.

But it’s Prince Edward Island that got top marks on the report card, with 107 out of its 358 school buses, or about one-third, operating on battery power. 

That's because P.E.I. Is the only province in which the government owns and operates all of the school buses, as opposed to individual school districts or private contractors, says Valérie Tremblay, a co-ordinator at the Canadian Electric School Bus Alliance (CESBA) and the lead of sustainable mobility at Green Communities Canada, one of the two groups that compiled the report card. 

(P.E.I. Has, however, paused its school bus fleet electrification plan. Read more about that here.)

The report notes that electric buses have the greatest benefits in provinces with clean electricity grids. Quebec’s electricity is 94 per cent hydropower, followed by wind; in B.C., 89 per cent of electricity comes from hydro. P.E.I. is nearly entirely wind powered.

New Brunswick had less than two per cent of its school buses running on battery power. Less than half a per cent of Ontario's school bus fleet is electrified. Alberta is at just 0.02 per cent. 

And there were no grades for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador — or the territories — because they "mostly" didn’t have any electric school buses on the road nor any policy support for them, Tremblay explains.

But, she says the goal of the report card is not to name and shame provinces and territories, rather to encourage more government support.

"We're not seeing enough funding being given by either the federal government or the provinces," Tremblay said. "So you can't really blame operators or school districts for not wanting to make the transition when the upfront cost is so much higher for electric school buses."

According to CESBA, the upfront cost for an electric school bus, without subsidies, can be 1.5 to 2.5 times higher than diesel bus.

Daniel Breton, the president and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada, says the federal government offered support through its Zero Emissions Transit Fund, announced in 2021. But he told What On Earth Host Laura Lynch that both public transit and school buses were eligible, and transit buses got most of the funding because they had the resources to navigate the red tape of the application process. 

But he believes that Ottawa has learned from its mistakes and that a more streamlined process could be forthcoming that will make it easier to secure funding for electric school buses. 

And that makes him optimistic that could lead to a point in the next five years in which 50 per cent of school buses are electric. 

— Nick Logan

Check out our podcast and radio show.  In our latest episode: Farmers are using an old trick as a new way to grow food and reduce emissions. Lightning sparked inside a box helps create fertilizer with less cost to the planet. But it’s controversial, with critics calling it “snake oil.” Those who love it say the proof is in the plants they harvest.  Story producer Jennifer Wilson digs into whether lightning in a box is a real thing.

A couple of weeks ago, we featured a story about how the plants you can grow in Canada are changing with climate change. 

Karla Braun of Winnipeg wrote: "Your article doesn't mention the unusual temperature swings that come along with global weirding, not merely the warmer temperatures…. I fear confused buds will emerge only to be frozen solid when temperatures plunge again. Or the reverse: when scorching hot summer days are interrupted by a completely unforeseen killing frost while everything is flourishing. And then there's the deluges and the torrential winds blowing over gentle stalks or knocking blossoms off blooming trees…. I'm concerned folks are taking the warming too lightly if all we speak of are the exciting plants we can grow — assuming we'll be able to grow anything."

Danny Blair, professor and co-director of the Prairie Climate Centre at the University of Winnipeg and guest editor of the 2023 Prairie Garden book, confirmed that the weather is expected to get more variable with climate change. In an email, he explained that's partly due to changes in the jet stream that can lead to sudden swings between cold and hot temperatures and hot and dry spells — all of which can harm garden plants. "So, even though we are very confident that temperatures will continue to rise in the decades ahead and that the higher amounts of energy within a longer growing season may produce better average growing conditions, one must keep in mind, as always, that variability is a very important aspect of our climate that must be considered when assessing possibilities and limitations."

Write us at whatonearth@cbc.ca (and send photos there too!)

The diagram below shows where emissions come from during the life cycle of liquefied natural gas or LNG — three-quarters come from customers burning it.

Last week, Canada and Germany announced an agreement to export one million metric tonnes of liquid natural gas (LNG) per year from northwestern British Columbia to Europe. The LNG would be liquefied at the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG facility north of Prince Rupert, on Nisga'a Nation territory.

Carney has pitched LNG from Ksi Lisims as "the lowest-carbon LNG in the world," because the plan is for it to be powered by electricity instead of natural gas. 

— Emily Chung

Seven years ago, Tom Szaky convinced some of the world's biggest corporations to invest in an old-fashioned milkman-style solution to reducing waste.

The Princeton University dropout-turned-global leader in recycling initiatives introduced Loop — a company that would deliver everything from piping hot Tim Hortons coffee to Unilever soap and Häagen-Dazs to your door in reusable, returnable packaging.

You could also buy the items at select grocery stores for a small deposit that you get back upon returning your packaging on your next trip.

More than 100 brands signed on — investing at least $25 million US — including Canadian partners like Loblaw.

At the time, chairman Galen Weston cited corporate responsibility as his motivation, saying in a 2021 news release, "there's too much plastic waste in our environment. We are part of the problem and must be part of the solution."

Statistics support what Weston was saying. That same year, Canadians discarded about five million tonnes of plastic, only about nine per cent of which was recycled.

But despite the hype around Loop and those early investments, the pilot projects launched in North America, Japan and the U.K. In 2021 quietly shuttered. Only in France, which adopted reusable packaging regulations, did the concept flourish.

As Loop keeps expanding in Europe — with products in 500 French stores and new pilots in the U.K. — could it ever work in Canada? And, if so, what would it take? 

The timing seemed perfect: Loop's inception in 2019 coincided with a regulatory push for corporate stewardship, with bans on plastic bags and plastic straws cropping up across North America.

There was intense scrutiny on packaging, and it became a symbol of a company's commitment to the environment or lack thereof, said Lisa McTigue Pierce, executive editor of Packaging Digest in Chicago.

"We were throwing away way too much and consumers wanted a change," she said. "Then bam, [Szaky] is there with, not only an original idea, but [he] had fully thought it out."

Though there's demand for sustainable options, that doesn't always translate into people paying for them — even if they say they will. 

Szaky, however, said they all gave him the same message: The demand didn't translate into selling more products — and they couldn't justify scaling up if it didn't increase profitability.

In France, Loop is flourishing. It works with more than 400 products that it offers in 500 grocery stores across the country, which Szaky said is largely feasible because of regulations to eliminate single-use plastics by 2040.

Regulations within the French Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law require medium and large retailers to dedicate at least 20 per cent of store space to bulk items or those with reusable packaging by 2030, and the government has put subsidies in place to help with the transition.

Loop's success in France has increased exponentially as its offerings have expanded, Szaky said.

When the company was only offering five products in a store, he said both sales and return rates were low. But once Loop hit 50 or so products per stores, sales jumped — and so did returns, from 15 to 80 per cent.

It makes sense, he said, considering customers might be more motivated to get a $5 deposit back than they might be to get 10 cents back for returning one reusable container.

It was a lightbulb moment for Loop in France, Szaky said, and a lesson about the role convenience plays in future expansion. 

"Consumers want a big assortment, they want to be able to buy a lot of things," Szaky said.

A worldwide shift to reusable packaging will only happen if other countries adopt France's carrot-and-stick model, Szaky said — something that does not appear to be on the legislative horizon in Canada. 

In an email to What on Earth, a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada wrote about broad efforts to encourage reuse and transition to a circular plastics economy, citing numerous investments "to spur the development of new technologies that address plastic waste and pollution."

There was no mention of regulations akin to those in France when asked whether Canada might consider similar legislation.

Even if there were regulations, there are logistical hurdles for a reusable system to be better for the environment in a country the size of Canada. 

Once you start adding up the energy used in distribution, transportation and cleaning, recycling may actually be the more energy-efficient option, said Myra Hird, an environmental studies professor at Queen's University. 

"If the reusing is far, far away from the source, then reuse is actually worse than recycling — and it's worse than landfilling," Hird said.

A better solution, she said, would be to reduce needless consumption and the production of waste.

Szaky, proudly sporting a sweater he's worn into disrepair, agreed that reducing consumption would be ideal — but he is adamant that reuse is part of the solution.

And he says he believes it will make a rebound in Canada. 

"It's in our future," he said. "We just have to be able to survive going from today to, you know, when that momentum really hits."

— Laura Fraser

Thanks for reading. If you have questions, criticisms or story tips, please send them to whatonearth@cbc.ca.

What on Earth? comes straight to your inbox every Thursday. 

Editors: Emily Chung | Logo design: Sködt McNalty

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