Spring Street Climate Fund
2023 – $15,000 Zero emission school buses

Addressing climate change is a central challenge of this moment; the actions taken today will help determine the safety and prosperity of billions of people living today and set a framework for generations to come. 

New Yorkers are uniquely positioned to have an outsized impact on climate outcomes around the globe. New York is the world’s 11th largest economy; what happens in New York can build markets, reshape industries and incentivize billions of dollars of investment. As a prominent large state, New York’s actions set a precedent that can scale to other states and the country as a whole.

That’s where Spring Street Climate Fund comes in. Spring Street identifies opportunities to win climate policy in New York that can make a difference globally, and partners with grassroots organizations throughout the state to turn ambitious ideas into public policy. Spring Street acts as a force multiplier in the climate movement, helping supercharge the grassroots organizing that can turn New York into a powerful force for progress.

Since its founding in 2021, Spring Street has helped win progress on bold new policies, including:

• A ban on fossil fuel heating in new construction in New York State: Spring Street helped to win first-in-the-nation statewide legislation that phases out construction of buildings that burn fossil fuels for heating and cooking. The broad influence is already becoming clear, including calls for California to follow suit and a new proposal to end natural gas hookups in Chicago.
• Protection for Local Law 97: Spring Street is supporting the grassroots campaign to protect Local Law 97, New York City’s world-leading clean buildings law. Spring Street is providing support to grassroots organizations spearheading the effort to fully enforce the law, as well as communications support to ensure that the benefits of the law are prominent and public.
• Progress on the NY HEAT Act: Spring Street is working with grassroots organizations around the state to build support for groundbreaking legislation that would begin to wind down New York’s multi-billion-dollar utility gas network. If NY HEAT succeeds, it could create a pathway not just for New York but for other states with ambitious climate policies that are also stuck with sprawling, expensive gas distribution networks.

As part of its mission to identify opportunities for New York to make an outsized difference on climate policy, Spring Street is also working to make New York the first state in the nation to fully transition away from diesel school buses and to clean, zero-emissions school buses statewide. 

Diesel school buses are not only a climate change issue – emitting high levels of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide – but also a public health and environmental justice issue: the air in a school bus is up to 12 times as toxic as the ambient air outside the bus. This hurts the children breathing the dirty air on their buses, and hurts environmental justice communities where school bus depots are disproportionately located. The challenge is vast, and the opportunity for New York to use its unique leverage to address the problem is immediate and real. 

New York has nearly 50,000 school buses in operation across the state, approximately one out of every ten buses nationwide. By transitioning its entire school bus fleet to zero-emissions vehicles, New York can help to bend the cost curve and make electric school buses cheaper for everyone – changing the economics of zero-emissions buses not only for its own school districts but for states across the country.

In 2022, Spring Street supported the successful grassroots campaign to make New York the first state in the country to require the transition of its entire fleet to zero-emissions buses. In its 2022 state budget, New York became the first state in the country to mandate the transition of its entire fleet to zero-emissions buses. Spring Street then supported a public education campaign to secure $500 million in funding to help school districts around the state make the transition to zero-emissions school buses through the Environmental Bond Act. 

But the campaign is not yet complete. Winning a law in Albany is not the same as making the change a reality on the ground. Today, Spring Street Climate Fund is partnering with grassroots organizations in New York State to ensure that policymakers and elected leaders remain accountable to the promises they have made to implement a full transition to a zero-emissions bus fleet.

If the effort is successful, full implementation of New York’s school bus law will reduce direct emissions while also building the nation’s first statewide market for zero-emissions buses, reducing the cost of clean school buses not just in New York but for consumers nationwide.