by Nick Pope
President Joe Biden has pledged to install 500,000 public electric vehicle (EV) chargers across the United States by 2030, but the logistical hurdles may be too great to overcome.
The Biden administration allocated $7.5 billion to build a network of public electric vehicle charging stations across the country as part of its bipartisan 2021 infrastructure package, but that funding only led to handful charging stations currently in operation. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg confirmed the administration’s position goal apply the money raised to build 500,000 chargers by 2030 during the May TV program appearance on CBS News, but challenges like adding transmission lines, managing the permitting process and coordinating with utilities make that goal unlikely.
Since April 1, the administration’s $7.5 billion effort has only led to seven operating charging stations with fewer than 40 chargers across the U.S., a pace that has picked up criticism from House Republicans and even a Democratic senator from Oregon. Jeff Merkley. While other projects are on track to be implemented and operational, the country’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure is still mainly concentrated in the country’s densely populated coastal areas, According to to the Department of Energy (DOE).
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While results are snail-paced to emerge, federal funding should be enough to build about 25,000 charging points at about 5,000 stations, according to Atlas Public Policy, a policy analysis organization that focuses specifically on electric vehicles. To reach these numbers by 2030, the administration’s funding will need to spur the construction of more than 900 stations each year, a large improvement over the program’s performance of less than 10 stations in almost three years.
“Our programs accelerate private sector investment, enabling us to deploy 500,000 charging ports well ahead of schedule and continue to expand a convenient and reliable charging network,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson told DCNF. “Currently, projects are underway in partnership with states and local grantees for 14,000 federally funded electric vehicle charging ports across the country under the program [National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI)] AND [Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI)] programs that will be based on the 184,000 chargers currently in operation.”
Of the 184,000 chargers currently in operation, more than 107,000 were already in circulation in 2020, the last full year before the Biden administration took office, According to to the DOE. Moreover, there are only about 10,000 speedy charging stations in the U.S., and EV advocates would like to see the number boost to address public concerns about EV range and charging wait times. According to to the Washington Post.
According to experts who spoke to Daily Caller News, the biggest logistical hurdles may not be immediately obvious, such as the lengthy process of building the needed transmission lines and upgrading existing utility infrastructure to support hundreds of thousands of up-to-date chargers. Foundation on whether this number of chargers will be operational by 2030.
One of the skeptical experts is Dr. Jonathan Lesser, senior employee of the National Center for Energy Analysis and president of Continental Economics. Lesser estimates that “hundreds of thousands of miles” of up-to-date transmission lines will be needed to deliver enough electricity to the right places to meet the administration’s goal, a high order considering the U.S. has managed to complete less than 700 miles of projects transmission in 2022, According to to data aggregated by Statista.
Lesser wrote his own analysis challenges facing the electric vehicle charging administration on The Hill on Monday.
“The administration’s efforts to roll out electric vehicles without considering the physical infrastructure to charge them (let alone the costs), not only highway charging stations but also necessary upgrades to millions of miles of local distribution circuits and home charging transformers, are either an exercise in signaling green virtues or a cynical effort to restrict Americans’ mobility,” Lesser told DCNF. “If electric vehicles are the wave of the future, consumers will buy them without mandates, and the private sector will develop the necessary infrastructure, just as it did a hundred years ago and just as Tesla did for its vehicles, without the need for government intervention.”
‘Fundamentally wrong’: Virginia heads towards exit ramp after California’s ‘out-of-touch’ EV rules pass https://t.co/oOKcH9Dha1
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“If all these chargers were in place, hundreds of thousands of large transformers and transmission lines along highways would be needed to provide electricity,” Lesser continued. “You would need installers to install everything, and there is already a shortage of them. Of course, none of this addresses the issue of where the electricity comes from – if it was to come from renewable sources (e.g. wind and solar), a massive construction effort would be necessary.”
Lesser believes there is “no chance” the 500,000 charger goal will be met by 2030, and added that Buttigieg’s suggestion that the administration will meet that goal is “pure fantasy.”
In addition to the billions of dollars earmarked for subsidizing public charging infrastructure, the administration is also spending heavily to aid manufacturers produce more electric vehicles and to blunt higher costs of electric vehicles for consumers. Moreover, federal agencies have also announced aggressive fuel management standards and tailpipe emissions regulations that will force electric vehicle sales to boost significantly over the next decade airy, medium- AND hefty models.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm described chargers in the $7.5 billion program were deemed “the most difficult because they go to places that the private sector hasn’t gone, because there’s no power, because they’re remote,” as stated during Wednesday’s Politico 2024 Energy Summit.
Aidan Mackenzie – a fellow at the Progress Institute for Infrastructure with particular expertise in energy, transport and housing policy – agreed that logistical challenges would likely hinder the administration’s goal of deploying chargers by 2030. He particularly emphasized securing complementary infrastructure , such as transmission lines, which will likely take time and resources away from efforts to build a national network of public chargers.
“It looks like it will be difficult to achieve this goal,” Mackenzie told DCNF. “Different utility regions do not necessarily have an incentive to plan or build high-capacity transmission lines that share energy. They often disrupt how utilities want to control generation in their region. Therefore, I would expect this to be a binding restriction.”
But Mackenzie added that the administration can achieve the desired results of its $7.5 billion program and its broader goal of 500,000 chargers if regulators and developers can develop “muscle memory” in the earlier stages of implementation so that officials from both sectors will be able to navigate intricate processes easier and faster in the near future.
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Nick Pope is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
