Low or No Emission Grant Program

Low or No Emission Grant Program is sponsored by U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration (FTA). This program provides funding to state and local governmental authorities for the purchase or lease of zero-emission and low-emission transit buses, including acquisition, construction, and leasing of required supporting facilities.

It aims to support the transition of the nation's transit fleet to more energy-efficient and less polluting vehicles. Applicants proposing projects related to zero-emission vehicles must spend 5% of their award on workforce development and training unless they certify that their financial need is less. The federal share can be up to 85% for bus costs and 90% for related equipment and facilities.

Analysis: New FTA bus program awards skipped out on clean vehicles - Transportation For America Analysis: New FTA bus program awards skipped out on clean vehicles The Trump administration’s decision to take $2 billion intended to lower bus emissions and instead maximize the purchase of dirtier buses is another example of how, without real accountability, the next transportation bill is on track to undermine congressional intent.

The latest round of awards in the Low or No Emission program for procuring new, cleaner buses is out, and at $2 billion, it’s the largest announcement ever. More buses are always great, but there’s a wrinkle: this is going to be the most polluting round of funding in the program’s history since the administration almost exclusively bought more emitting buses.

If this is how the Trump administration is going to treat these types of funding priorities, how can they be trusted with a new reauthorization? On November 20, 2025, transit agencies and stakeholders everywhere cheerily celebrated the announcement of $2 billion in federal awards to buses made under the Low or No Emission Grant Program .

Created in the FAST Act (the transportation bill before the current law, the IIJA), the “Low-No Program” has been around since the first Trump administration, and has been responsible for the delivery of thousands of zero-emission and low-emission buses to transit agencies of all sizes across the country.

Unlike the other capital formula programs at FTA, this program was specifically tailored to help transit agencies procure more expensive transit buses that use either “no emission” electric or hydrogen propulsion, or alternative fuel low-emission sources, like propane, compressed natural gas, or diesel-electric hybrids, that are both known to emit less greenhouse gases and cancer-causing particulate emissions than traditional diesel.

Both types of vehicles come with major operational benefits to transit agencies, climate benefits for the environment, and health benefits for the bus drivers and riders exposed to tailpipe fumes when near transit.

Over the program’s lifetime, agency demand has skewed heavily toward electric buses, spurred on by the potential operations savings and other benefits and statutory language in the program calling for the Secretary to consider projects with the lowest emissions.

However, demand for electric buses was so great and the buses were so effective at reducing emissions that the low-emission, fossil-fueled buses rarely, if ever, won out when evaluated solely on performance before the IIJA.

To circumvent this, certain members of the Senate added language to the program during the passage of the IIJA, installing a multibillion-dollar minimum for these non-zero emission buses so natural gas and propane buses would be more competitive (essentially, they did “affirmative action” for fossil fuels).

Despite the change, our Greener Fleets report from 2023 demonstrated that the demand for low-emission buses was so low in fiscal year 2022 that the newly added minimum set-aside couldn’t be reached—even with the Biden administration awarding funds to almost every low-emission bus applicant. In the following rounds, “low-emission” buses ended up making up a greater number of awards.

Since the IIJA’s passage, electric bus manufacturers have struggled with inflation and demand, with a major manufacturer pulling out of the U.S. market and another going bankrupt . Observing those challenges with zero-emission buses and recognizing the higher probability of getting an award for a low-emission bus application, transit agencies applied for more low-emission buses in FY 2023 and FY 2024.

Based on our analysis of the more than 100 projects awarded under the Low-No program, an unprecedented 97 percent of awards made by USDOT in the FY25 funding opportunity went to low-emission buses.

This comes despite the fact that t he program itself requires the U.S. Department of Transportation to consider in its awards, projects that “make greater reductions in energy consumption and harmful emissions, including direct carbon emissions, than comparable standard buses or other low or no emission buses.

” And now a program created nearly ten years ago specifically to prioritize the deployment of zero-emission buses is going to buy almost none of them. This is a drastic departure in the distribution of funding awards compared to previous years of the program, including those under the first Trump administration.

This should not be too surprising that the administration would have this bias, as they indicated in the notice of funding opportunity, they would favor low-emission buses to the greatest extent allowed by law. But was what the administration did this year even allowed by law? Did the USDOT properly consider how emissions-reducing “low emissions” applicants were compared to “no emissions” applicants?

You can’t trust this administration to implement programs as intended by Congress This move is disappointing and indicative of a continued disregard for the congressional intent and purpose behind IIJA programs that the administration has consistently demonstrated over the course of the year.

It is doubly a shame, as this year’s funding opportunity continued to make great strides in improving program design, prioritizing awards to agencies that emphasized better procurement practices, like prioritizing applicants that worked with manufacturers to get simpler buses on the road faster for riders . These are the sorts of improvements that would have scaled best with zero-emission buses, where changes like these matter most.

There were plenty of legitimate reasons to diversify federal funding awards to electric transit buses and low-emission buses, especially this year. Electric buses have struggled in recent years, with manufacturers closing U.S. operations, and transit advocates being more cautious about the trade-offs that transitioning to electric buses today could entail.

Even considering that, the law remained unchanged between fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Unless the distribution of applications for electric buses versus low-emission buses represented a complete and full reversal of trends observed in previous years, the Trump administration seems to have put its thumb on the scale. Why should Congress entrust the administration with more funding?

Congress is in the process of drafting the next surface transportation reauthorization bill to replace the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which expires in less than a year in 2026. As Congress considers what guardrails it installs in that bill, the Trump administration will ultimately be responsible for implementing programs like this one that prioritize national goals like emissions reduction and safety improvements.

Yet the administration has demonstrated a consistent bias against the type of projects that are most effective at meeting those emissions reduction and safety goals.

They have cut safety rulemaking short , and eliminated funding for projects that create safe infrastructure for people walking or biking, introduced arbitrary freezes to programs, allowed funding to lapse for projects that reduce infrastructure liabilities and repair divisive infrastructure, and more.

This funding award further underscores the point we made earlier this year that we are in no place to provide this administration with more funding until the existing laws are implemented faithfully to their intentions and toward national goals.

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