Of the maritime provinces, PEI is leading the pack when it comes to school bus electrification. See below for info on the various provinces where data was available.

PEI

PEI's 299 buses are all provincially owned and operated. As of June 2021, they had 12 electric school buses operating in the Charlottetown area, and another 35 had been purchased. 

In 2021 the province announced plans to replace the entire fleet with electric buses, over the next 10 years (approximately), by replacing 25-30 buses per year.

Funding (for the initial purchases) came from the Government of Canada ($2.1 million) and Govt of PEI ($2.7 million). 

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia has 1,300 school buses; 2/3s of these are district owned, and 1/3 are owned by private contractors. Of the district owned buses, a quarter are gasoline, and the remainder are diesel. Some of the private operators (such as Southlands) have some propane buses.

New Brunswick has 1,250 school buses that carry 75,000 students 143,000 kms/day, or 26 million kms/year. 

New Brunswick trialed 2 electric school buses in 2017,  and 16 propane buses and 74 gasoline buses in the Moncton area in 2019. 

A comprehensive analysis of the four fuel types was conducted to assess feasibility, though there were some problems with the meter readings on the electric buses that hampered their assessment. Overall, they found that gasoline and propane buses were roughly the same cost, though implementing the infrastructure for propane was more challenging.

In future, NB has committed to phase out diesel buses; all new purchases will be of propane and gasoline buses moving forward. They will continue to evaluate electric buses.

Newfoundland & Labrador have a mixed model with provincially owned and private operators - for example, the NFL English School District owns 1/3 of their buses (335 buses), and 2/3 are contracted, while the NFL French School District uses private operators only.

The majority of the province owned buses are diesel but have some gasoline buses as well (figures not available). In Aug. 2021, analysis on the feasibility of electric school buses was being done internally in the Department of Education.

Our teams in the Maritimes are working with Ecology Action Centre and Conservation Council to advocate for electric school buses in the region.