Daily on Energy: State Officials Worry Electric Car Expansion Could Hurt Low-Income People

by Josh Siegel & Abby Smith (Washington Examiner) ELECTRIC CARS’ EQUITY PROBLEM: Top energy officials from New York and Massachusetts are raising the fear that requiring increasing use of electric cars could impose financial hardships on poor people.

That is especially if utilities bear the cost of building out charging infrastructure and pass that onto ratepayers, said Richard Kauffman, board chair of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Such additional charges are “disproportionately born by people of lower income,” he added, during remarks Wednesday on a webinar hosted by OurEnergyPolicy.

Those low-income communities are also unlikely to benefit initially from increasing access to charging stations because electric cars are out of their price range. Incentives and rebates offered for purchasing EVs, too, help the higher-income first buyer of the car, but those often don’t extend to the used car market.

Massachusetts is looking at offering rebates for second-hand electric cars, a step New Jersey has already taken, said Kathleen Theoharides, the state's energy and environmental affairs secretary.

That’s important from an environmental justice perspective, she added. “We have to consider how to get those vehicles” into the hands of lower-income customers.

State officials are grappling with these equity questions as they craft a region-wide cap-and-trade program for transportation fuels this year. They’re hoping to mimic the success of their Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative program, which targets power sector carbon emissions, in the transportation sector, which is the biggest emitter in the U.S.

Charging’s chicken-or-the-egg problem: The U.S. has struggled to build out an electric car charging network at the scale and speed of Europe, Kauffman said. While Europe has about 180,000 charging stations, the U.S. only has around 25,000, despite big pushes from California, New York, and other states to increase electric car adoption.

Part of the problem, Kauffman said, is paying for the infrastructure. Utilities say they’ll chip in (electrification is a demand boon for them), but that means they’ll ultimately put those costs into their rate base, raising costs for consumers.

Other large financiers are hesitant to put down capital unless they know the infrastructure will be readily used, but consumers are still anxious to buy electric cars if they feel like there aren’t enough places to charge them.

Can oil companies fill the gap? So far, some oil majors like BP and Shell have only dipped their toes in the water. But that may change as those companies weigh diversifying their investments to become net-zero energy companies by 2050.

BP, for example, is looking at trials for fast charging stations in New York, as well as exploring other opportunities in the U.S., said Bob Stout, vice president and head of U.S. policy for BP America. The oil major already owns the largest EV charging network in the United Kingdom, and it strongly backs the Northeast’s regional transportation climate policy. READ MORE

Excerpt from GreenCarReports: Electricity grids in some United States cities may require upgrades to handle increasing numbers of electric cars, according to a new study from the United States Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

"While we don't know exactly when the tipping point will happen, fleets of fast-charging vehicles are going to change how cities and utilities manage their electricity infrastructure," Michael Kintner-Meyer, a PNNL electrical systems engineer, said in a statement. "It's not a question of if, but when."

The study, which factors in passenger cars, delivery vans, and long-haul trucks, found that current grid infrastructure can support 24 million EVs—about 9% of current light-duty vehicle traffic in the U.S.—through 2028.

The grid could start to experience strain at 30 million EVs nationally, but some areas may begin to experience issues before that, according to the study.

Drastic changes in demand can cause problems for electricity-generating infrastructure, which can't be switched on and off instantaneously. Utilities are always looking to "balance" the grid by keeping demand and generating capacity in sync. READ MORE

Excerpt from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: The analysis revealed the maximum EV load the grid could accommodate without building more power plants and transmission lines.

The good news is that through 2028, the overall power system, from generation through transmission, looks healthy up to 24 million EVs—about 9% of the current light-duty vehicle traffic in the U.S.

However, at about 30 million EVs, things get dicey. At the local level, issues may arise at even smaller EV adoption numbers. That’s because one fast-charging EV can draw as much load as up to 50 homes. If, for example, every house in a cul-de-sac has an EV, one power transformer won’t be able to handle multiple EVs charging at the same time.

As detailed in the report, current grid planning doesn’t adequately account for a mass influx of EVs.

And with more EVs plugging in to charge in the evening, the ramp-up becomes even steeper and drives up electricity costs.