Do Electric Buses Help Reduce Air Pollution?

By Chanmaly Te, ACE Student

About this Article:

This article is the final research essay of an Academic Writing & Research (Diploma Program) student at ACE.

Public transport is believed to be one of the best ways to help reduce air pollution. For that reason, most people now use public buses to travel. Public buses can indeed help reduce air toxins, but research has also shown that electric buses reduce air pollution more effectively than regular buses. Is this accurate?

An electric bus is a vehicle that carries a lot of people and is powered not by fuel, but by electricity stored in a rechargeable battery. Electric buses also use electric motors rather than ignition engines. Air pollution is toxic discharge emitted into the air. It negatively affects our health and the environment.

Electric buses have many advantages, but there are still arguments against them, for example that they are so expensive that they are unaffordable for most people, and that they have less power than regular buses due to their use of rechargeable batteries. On the other hand, electric buses can in fact save us money while making the air cleaner. In northern California, USA, ten electric buses were added to the community’s regular public transport options. It was shown that $300,000-$350,000 was saved per electric bus. In addition, even when non-renewable sources were used, an electric bus still emitted less carbon dioxide than a regular bus. With larger batteries and faster battery chargers, however, this problem can in fact be counteracted.

Electric buses help reduce not only air pollution, but noise pollution too. Noise pollution increases our risk of heart disease, and causes sleep disturbances and stress. Electric buses are a lot quieter and more peaceful. In some cases, artificial noise is even added to electric buses, so that waiting passengers can hear their bus coming!

Although electric buses are generally more expensive and have less power than normal buses, their reduced emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful toxins significantly help our environment, and they also help reduce noise pollution. I suggest that the government of every country buys at least one or two electric buses for each state or province, and that governments encourage their citizens to use electric buses instead of regular diesel buses and cars, which emit a lot of pollution.