Caterpillar Inc., along with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael O. Leavitt, have announced the recipients of grants to lower diesel emissions
from more than 240 school buses across the country.
The Caterpillar donation, totaling $250,000, is part of the company’s on-going role in the EPA’s Clean School Bus USA initiative.
More than 240 buses in Illinois, Texas and Arizona will be retrofitted with Caterpillar emissions reduction technology
In the first year of Clean School Bus USA, the EPA successfully demonstrated a $5 million pilot program to retrofit school buses around the country. Funding quickly ran out and more than 100 school district applications could not be filled. For the fiscal year 2005, the Bush Administration has asked Congress for $65 million to fund Clean School Bus USA bringing the program to hundreds of cities and thousands of schools. The program’s goal is to update the nation’s entire school bus fleet by 2010.
Caterpillar is the leading manufacturer and supplier of truck and bus engines in the combined medium and heavy-duty categories in North America. It is also a leading supplier of clean diesel school bus engines in North America.
The company has reduced on-highway diesel emissions in trucks and buses by nearly 90% since 1988 and will reduce those emissions another 90% by 2007.
Last year, Caterpillar launched a new line of engines equipped with low emission ACERT technology that power school and transit buses as well as on-highway trucks.
ACERT technology reduces emissions at the point of combustion. All Caterpillar on-highway truck and bus engines now in production are equipped with ACERT. The technology will also be used as the foundation to meet future emission regulations for the company’s entire diesel engine product line, including construction and mining machines and power generation units.
More information is available at www.cat.com.