Vice President Kamala Harris's signature electric school bus program was "overall a failure," according to a report published Tuesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee.
Under Harris's so-called Clean School Bus program, the Environmental Protection Agency has thus far dished out $1.9 billion in rebates and another $1 billion in grants to fund electric buses in school districts nationwide. According to the congressional report released Tuesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, however, the program is costly, vulnerable to fraud, a subsidy for products with ties to China, and an incentive for districts to adopt technology that is inefficient.
"It is clear the $5 billion Clean School Bus program is overall a failure and, in many cases, a waste of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars," House Energy and Commerce Committee chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), oversight subcommittee chairman Morgan Griffith (R., Va.), and environment subcommittee chairman Buddy Carter (R., Ga.) said in a joint statement.
Harris's initiative to increase the number of electric school buses on the road across the country is one of several big-money green energy programs that have faced significant hurdles and delays as they have been deployed by the Biden-Harris administration in recent years. Democrats and environmental activists have particularly sought to use federal spending to target the transportation sector, which they say is driving global warming.
The report found that electric school buses remain far more expensive than traditional diesel-powered alternatives. While diesel buses—which make up the vast majority of the nation's fleet of nearly 550,000 yellow school buses—typically cost about $100,000, the average electric bus costs upwards of $380,000. Electric charging infrastructure, also funded by the Clean School Bus program, costs up to an additional $30,000 per bus.
One district selected for the program told the committee that it wished it had been "made aware of the expense of the chargers needed for zero-emissions buses before requesting them." Costs for chargers, in certain cases, climbed to $50,000 per bus, far more than districts expected.
The report concluded that expensive taxpayer-funded subsidies—such as those released under the Clean School Bus program—are the only things enabling electric school buses' ability to compete with diesel buses on the market.
The program was also designed without verification procedures, making it more vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse, the report found.
In one example, which had been previously highlighted by the EPA's inspector general, an administrative entity without any students was approved for program funding by the EPA. EPA associate administrator Tim Del Monico defended the decision to provide the funding, arguing the entity was eligible under the program requirements.
In another case, the inspector general was forced to issue subpoenas and conduct surveillance to obtain information about a contractor selected for Clean School Bus program funding, the report noted. The inspector general later wrote that taxpayer funds are "at risk" and that the EPA "has no mechanism for verifying the accuracy or legitimacy of applicant information."
The committee also noted that, despite their high price tag, electric buses have a much lower range, especially in the colder conditions experienced by many school districts that received funding. One district told the committee that, in their experience with the buses, the technology is "not adequate for a rural district."
Additionally, the report laid out how the program supports Chinese manufacturing, mainly because EV batteries and their components are largely sourced from China.
According to the International Energy Agency, China dominates global electric vehicle battery supply chains, boasting a 75 percent share of manufacturing capacity. The nation further owns 90 percent of the global production capacity for cathodes and 97 percent for anodes, two key components of such batteries, additional data showed.
In addition, Chinese companies own 59 percent of lithium and 73 percent of cobalt processing and refining capacity, according to a July 2022 Brookings Institution report. Those two critical minerals, in addition to copper and nickel, are vital for EV batteries and other green energy technologies.
"The program, led by the radical Biden-Harris EPA, props up a market that relies heavily upon a supply chain dominated by the Chinese Communist Party. Further, the program was constructed without the necessary safeguards to prevent fraud and incentivizes schools to use buses they otherwise would not choose," said McMorris Rodgers, Griffith, and Carter. "It’s also important to note that the EPA refuses to tell us how many of these school buses are on the road."
"As the official tasked with ensuring the success of the program, Vice President Harris bears great responsibility for its significant shortcomings," the Energy and Commerce Committee chairs added.
The first-of-its-kind Clean School Bus program was initially created by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which earmarked a total of $5 billion for the initiative. Then, two years ago in October 2022, Harris and the EPA administrator announced the program's first tranche of rebates: $1 billion to fund 2,400 buses across 389 school districts.
Earlier this year, the EPA announced a $1 billion tranche of grants for 2,700 buses across 280 school districts and a second tranche of rebates, worth $900 million, to fund 3,400 buses across another 530 districts.
The Free Beacon previously reported that a fraction of the buses Harris and EPA officials promised have been deployed. As of Tuesday, EPA's own data showed just 135 buses across 61 school districts had been deployed using funding from the October 2022 tranche designed to support 2,400 buses across 389 districts. Fifty-five of those districts have withdrawn from the program altogether, citing a wide range of issues such as high costs, technological problems, and the low range of electric buses.
The data also show that six districts selected for funding as part of the agency's most recent funding round just four months ago have already withdrawn from the program.
The EPA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
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