My wife Mary and I just returned from a 2-month, 8,181-mile winter camping road trip, traveling from Massachusetts to California and back in our 2019 Kia e-Niro fully electric (64 kWh battery) crossover SUV. Along the way we spent 58 nights in a tent with our two dogs, mostly in the desert southwest, so calling it “winter camping” needs to be qualified. For most of the nights, the temperatures were well above freezing, though there were definitely a few chilly nights at the end of January when we began our trip, and a few more out west, especially when camping at higher elevations.

A note from Green Energy Consumers Alliance: We are BIG fans of electric school buses. We’ve written about them on our blog, we advocate for state policy to make it easier for school districts to get them, and we educate community members on their benefits. We are very happy to feature this guest blog from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center on its school bus program, ACT School Bus.

School bus fleet electrification projects are on the rise nationwide, and new federal and state funding programs offer an opportunity for underserved public school districts to be some of the earliest adopters of electric school buses in the United States. In 2022, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched the Clean School Bus Program, a rebate program that will provide $5 billion over the next five fiscal years (FY22 through FY26) to replace existing school buses with zero-emission and low-emission vehicles. EPA’s Clean School Bus Program, along with other state and federal programs, has the potential to deploy thousands of zero-emission school buses each year. MassCEC has launched a program called ACT School Bus to help Massachusetts school districts apply for and complement federal funding for electric school buses. Keep reading to find out how your school district can take action!

In case you missed it, the Boston Globe did an excellent story exposing how the Mass. Department of Public Utilities has been poorly managing applications of cities and towns to adopt municipal aggregation.

When we talk about electric cars at Green Energy Consumers, we often get questions about road trips. How do you drive hundreds of miles with a battery electric vehicle? How do you plan where to charge? Does it take forever? That's why we love featuring real stories from real people about their experience driving electric. Here's a guest blog from our friend Nicole about her family's trip from Massachusetts to Virginia in a fully-electric car. (This blog refers to the different types of charging and plugs. If you need a refresher, check out our charging basics page!)

Note: At Green Energy Consumers, we know that we need to rapidly electrify all forms of transportation – especially including medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which disproportionately contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and localized air pollution. We're excited to post this guest blogpost from Jenny Kritzler at CALSTART and Kristen Patneaude from PowerOptions, who are working with MassCEC to offer Mass Fleet Advisor. If you have a private or nonprofit fleet that you'd like to electrify, read on!

One of the top concerns we at Green Energy Consumers hear from people who are considering switching to an electric vehicle is: "how far can I go?" Well, two of our EV Ambassadors recently completed an 8,854-mile road-trip from Massachusetts all the way to California in an all-electric Kia Niro EV and kindly wrote up this blogpost for us. It's longer than our usual blogposts, but well worth the trip (pun intended!) for all who are interested in the nitty-gritty of taking a really, *really* long road-trip in an all-electric car. The following was all written by Glen Ayers, with a couple of editorial notes from Green Energy Consumers in italics.

If you read our last EV owners blog, then you probably already know a little about what makes people so passionate about their electric vehicles—regenerative braking, quick pick-up, no noise, and of course, zero emissions! Because of this passion, we’ve sold a lot of cars through Drive Green, and the Chevrolet Bolt has consistently been one of the most popular. I spoke with some of our dedicated electric vehicle (EV) owners to see why they’re so committed to their Bolts.

With electric vehicles consistently gaining more and more media attention, we wanted to share what it was that made electric vehicle (EV) owners love their cars so much. I reached out to some of our members who have purchased a vehicle through Drive Green, and they assured me that whether you’re looking to drive across the country, zip through city streets, or even replace your motorcycle, there’s an EV for you! Check out what they had to say below.

Edited by Mal Skowron

Holly Reid and Rich Shaw live in North Carolina.  They have driven a Prius since 2006, but their ever-growing interests in reducing energy consumption drove them to consider purchasing an all-electric vehicle.  They heard about the Drive Green program from their daughter, Indy, who worked at Green Energy Consumers Alliance in 2018. 

Holly and Rich explored their options using the Drive Green webpage and decided to purchase an EV—even if it meant traveling up to New England to complete the deal and driving it back to North Carolina.  And although their small town hosts six EV charging stations, the Reid-Shaws' plan to charge their vehicle at home using solar energy from the rooftop panels they installed on their historic home (ca. 1795).