The city of Manchester, New Hampshire, is replacing older school buses with 14 propane-fueled ones to help improve air quality.

The city has a total of 81 school buses. Officials say tests show the propane buses can cut emissions from diesel buses by 96%, New Hampshire Public Radio reported.

Manchester Transit Authority Executive Director Mike Whitten said the city paid for the buses with more than $1.5 million from the state’s cut of a Volkswagen emission tampering settlement. He said that pool of money still has about $9 million available for electric school bus projects.

Jessica Wilcox of the Department of Environmental Services said recently that no one applied to use that money in the first round of grants.

“We’ve got time now to be looking at how to put something together to move New Hampshire forward in this capacity,” Wilcox said. “Certainly with COVID-19 being a respiratory pandemic here in our nation, now is the best time to be looking at zero-emissions options for New Hampshire.”

As of Thursday, 6,921 people had tested positive for the virus in New Hampshire, an increase of 34 from the previous day. There were two new deaths, for a total of 422. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in New Hampshire decreased over the past two weeks from 34 cases per day on July 29 to 28 per day on Aug. 12.