Electric Vehicles Are Here – Is Your Community Ready?

Transportation is the state’s number one source of greenhouse gas emissions and a primary source of local air pollution. Transportation electrification is part of the climate change solution.  Battery electric vehicles – BEVs or EVs for short – are becoming more commonplace in many of our communities. They are better for the environment and are less costly to operate and maintain (and quieter too). Functionally EVs are just like their petroleum fueled vehicle siblings, except for those periodic visits to the filling station - instead EVs need to plug in to fuel up.  In local use, EVs typically plug in where their owners keep them – in garages or carports or at fleet locations. Increasingly some EVs can plug in at work locations or places drivers visit for a while – stores, libraries and the like – if EV charging infrastructure (electric vehicle supply equipment - EVSE) is available.

Your community may want to encourage EV adoption by providing for development of publicly accessible EVSE. How can you do that?  Who builds out and operates the EVSE infrastructure?  Where should it go? How does your community ensure equitable access to EVSE throughout your community? What does your land use development codes and regulations need to include to help ensure your community’s EV support goals are met?

A good place to start is the Washington State Department of Commerce – check out the “Communities Get Ready for Electric Vehicles” website at www.commerce.wa.gov/growing-the-economy/energy/electric-vehicles/resources-govt-agencies.  Another is Municipal Research and Services Center’s (MRSC) “Planning for Electric Vehicles” website at www.mrsc.org/explore-topics/environment/sustainability/planning-for-electric-vehicles.

While you’re at it, reach out to your local electric utility to see how they can help. They may have incentive programs that can be helpful and may be able to provide a turn-key public EVSE solution to help meet your goals. Your local utility can also help you become knowledgeable about what the utility may need to do to support EVSE at given locations.  Depending on the level of charging (Level 2 and DC Fast Charging) and density of charging locations, the utility may need to make more than local system improvements to provide the power needed to support the charging … it all adds up.

Currently, much of the EVSE infrastructure is sited and developed by private companies – with names like Tesla, ChargePoint, Blink, EVgo – as business opportunities. These companies make development and siting decisions that they expect will work well for them – but may not be distributed throughout a community to provide access equitably to all users. Communities may need to provide incentives to EVSE developers or engage themselves for installation of EVSE to ensure desired and equitable charging access for everyone.  Regardless, all EVSE developers need to work with electric utilities to ensure there is adequate electric system capacity to serve EVSE wherever it is located.