White House unlocks $4.5B boost for EVs and charging infrastructure
July 25, 2016 | By
April Nowicki
The Obama Administration announced last week that $4.5 billion in loan guarantees will support more widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and a nationwide charging infrastructure. The announcement came last week after the Department of Energy's (DOE) first-ever Sustainable Transportation Summit and included a new framework to help vehicle manufacturers, electric utilities, electric vehicle charging companies and states in achieving these goals. The White House partnered with the DOE, the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Airforce, the Army and the Environmental Protection Agency to outline a set of guiding principles. The guiding principles included the launch of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which will identify zero emission and alternative fuel corridors that will benefit from electric vehicle charging infrastructure and develop a vision for a national network of electric vehicle fast charging stations. Local governments are invited to partner with the Federal government to procure electric vehicle fleets at a discounted value. The announced efforts intend to enable smart charging and vehicle grid integration through solutions such as demand response and energy storage and load management strategies. Energy companies that endorsed the guiding principles include Consumers Energy, Con Edison, Duke Energy, Edison Electric Institute, Florida Power and Light, National Grid, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Tesla, among others. Utilities have increasingly been supporting cross-country EV charging infrastructure. In January, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted to develop a pilot program to deploy 3,500 electric vehicle charging stations in the San Diego area. The New York Power Authority installed high-speed EV charging stations at four service areas along the New York State Thruway in the Hudson Valley. The state has a goal to install 3,000 charging stations by 2018. Where electricity demand growth is slowing due to increasing energy efficiency and more distributed solar PV generation, EVs offer utilities an entry into a sector of the economy that accounts for 28 percent of the country's energy consumption. Because EVs are so much more efficient than gasoline vehicles, in every southwestern state, except Wyoming, a switch to EVs lowers total energy use and emissions even as it increases electricity use. For more: © 2016 FierceMarkets, a division of Questex, LLC. All rights reserved. |