New Jersey electric school bus grant 2026 opens round 3 with 15 million dollars, 4 months after the federal program dropped electric bus priority

New Jersey electric school bus grant 2026 opens its third and final round

The New Jersey electric school bus grant 2026 round opened June 22, 2026 and took applications through August 28, 2026 at 5 00 in the afternoon Eastern time. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is offering up to 15,000,000 dollars in this round, called round 3, the last round authorized under the law that created the program. A school district or bus contractor can request a grant of up to 320,000 dollars for 1 electric school bus in a standard district, or up to 350,000 dollars in a district the state calls overburdened, meaning a census block group where 35% or more of households have low income, 40% or more of residents are minority, or 40% or more of households have limited English proficiency. Each grant includes a DC fast charger, and an applicant must request between 2 and 16 buses.

The program traces to P.L. 2022, c.86, a law New Jersey signed August 4, 2022. It authorized up to 45,000,000 dollars over 3 years, 15,000,000 dollars a year, to test whether replacing diesel school buses with electric ones works reliably and costs less to run over time. The law also required the state pick at least 6 grant winners a year spread across the state 3 regions, and send at least half of each year grants to low income, urban or environmental justice communities. Round 3 is the third and final year of that funding.

How the first 2 rounds compare

Round 1 opened in 2024 and funded 15,000,000 dollars, paying for 48 electric school buses. Round 2 opened August 4, 2025, and results announced January 8, 2026 showed more than 18,000,000 dollars funded 53 electric school buses and 41 fast chargers, reaching 11 overburdened communities.

Where New Jersey electric buses come from

Add round 1 and round 2 together and New Jersey own program has funded 101 electric school buses, a MAOWCE calculation from the 48 and 53 figures the state reports separately for each round. That is well short of the over 375 electric school buses the state said, in the round 3 solicitation issued June 22, 2026, are now operating or soon operating across New Jersey. No source explains where the rest came from. They could come from the separate federal Clean School Bus program, from Volkswagen settlement money the same state office also manages, or from a purchase a district makes on its own outside any grant, but this article does not guess which.

A federal program dropping electric buses from priority status

New Jersey round 3 closed 4 months after the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced, on February 19, 2026, that it would revamp its Clean School Bus program. That federal program was created by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with 5,000,000,000 dollars authorized over 5 years, fiscal years 2022 to 2026. The agency says about 2,700,000,000 dollars of that has been distributed so far, including 160,000,000 dollars that went to Lion Electric, a bus manufacturer that has since gone bankrupt. Going forward, the agency will open the program to biofuel, compressed natural gas, liquified natural gas, hydrogen and propane buses on equal footing with electric ones, rather than prioritizing electric.

As was the case with so many of the Biden-era programs, the Clean School Bus program has been a disaster of poor management and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.

Lee Zeldin, Administrator, United States Environmental Protection Agency. Source 5.

New Jersey program keeps running on its own schedule regardless. The 2 events are 4 months apart, and no source read for this article states that 1 caused the other.

We applaud the NJDEP for forging ahead with funding electric school buses.

Anjuli Ramos, Director, New Jersey Sierra Club. Source 3.