Sneak Preview: EPA To Issue Clean School Bus Program Guidance

(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in response to a recent EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit recommendation, plans to update its Clean School Bus Program guidance by November to better explain to program applicants which documents they need to provide to support that their existing school buses are eligible for replacement, and that replaced buses will provide service for five years. However, the agency has yet to respond to three other OIG recommendations in the audit.

The Clean School Bus Program awards grants and rebates to eligible recipients to replace their existing school buses with either buses that use alternative fuels such as natural gas or propane (i.e., clean buses), or electric-powered buses (i.e., zero-emission buses). Under the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act (IIJA) (Pub. L. 117-58), Congress provided EPA with $5 billion in grant funding for federal fiscal years (FY) 2022 through 2026. Awards can either go to replacing existing school buses, or for updating the charging and fueling infrastructure.

IIJA requires EPA to address the following criteria when selecting Clean School Bus Program award recipients:

• provide awards only to eligible recipients;
• award 50% of program funds to replace existing school buses with zero-emission buses and 50% with clean school buses;
• ensure clean school buses: (1) lower the overall cost of bus replacement, (2) consider local conditions (e.g., school bus route lengths, weather conditions), (3) include technologies that reduce the most emissions, and (4) promote cost parity between old technologies and new technologies;
• issue awards across a broad geographic distribution area;
• ensure that the amount received by eligible entities in any particular state does not exceed 10% of the total amount available under the program in a fiscal year;
• meet the president’s Justice40 goal; and
• select only applicants whose existing and replacement buses are eligible types of buses (see next paragraph) under EPA guidance.

OIG found that EPA generally followed the first six of these requirements when selecting program applicants, but the agency lacked internal controls to ensure that it selected recipients with eligible school buses. “EPA did not require sufficient documentation to demonstrate that recipients’ existing school buses met the fuel, weight and operational status requirements or that the replacement buses would provide a school district with bus service for at least five years,” OIG explained. “By requiring and then verifying such documentation before awarding Clean School Bus Program funds, the agency would mitigate the potential for fraud, waste and abuse.”

(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)

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