Two grant programs will dole out $2.5 billion over the next five years to build EV chargers in publicly accessible places and along highways.
(Bloomberg) — The Biden administration on Tuesday outlined the next step in its plan to deploy 500,000 new EV charging stations over the next five years, as the Department of Transportation begins accepting applications for $2.5 billion in grants to run public charging sites in urban, rural and tribal communities nationwide.
The Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) discretionary grant program, funded through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure law, is part of $7.5 billion in federal money geared at building out a national network of public EV chargers. In February, the White House published a set of rules for recipients of charging grants, focused on ensuring that chargers are reliable, easy to use and well-maintained.
“So many of the people who can theoretically gain the most from the gas and diesel savings of having an electric car are those who will be most impacted by the sticker price and by the lack of charging infrastructure,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview at Bloomberg News’ Washington DC bureau on Monday. “It’s very important to make sure there’s that charging accessibility.”
This CFI money will be split evenly between two grant programs. The Community Program will fund EV chargers, as well as hydrogen, propane and natural-gas fueling infrastructure, along public roads and in other publicly accessible locations such as parking lots for public buildings, parks and schools. Priority will be given to projects serving rural areas and low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, as well as communities with little private parking and many multi-unit dwellings. The Corridor Program will put money towards chargers and other fueling stations along highways. The DOT has set a goal of allocating at least 40% of all funds for disadvantaged communities.
“It’s a great market signal for where communities can and should be going towards electrification and how the federal government is taking note and ushering us along the way,” said Leilani Gonzalez, policy director at the Zero Emission Transportation Association. “We’re really excited to see the rollout.”
Buttigieg pointed out that rural areas sometimes have a “leg up” when it comes to EV charging, because more people live in single-family houses and are able to plug in at home. “Very different if you’re in a dense urban area and neither your workplace nor your apartment building today has those chargers,” he said, adding that the administration is “very intentionally” catering to both types of communities.
The limited and fragmented nature of America’s charging infrastructure continues to be an obstacle to wider EV adoption. (The scarcity and expense of electric cars is another, though the Inflation Reduction Act also includes point-of-sale tax credits for some new and used EVs.) The White House wants EVs to make up at least 50% of new car sales by 2030, and its National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program calls for fast, public charging stations every 50 miles nationwide by 2026. About one third of Americans don’t have a private garage. One third is also the portion of people who rent and the share of Americans in multi-unit housing. These overlapping groups are unlikely to have a devoted EV plug at home and stand to benefit from more public chargers in their community. “Charging really has to be available where people are,” from chargers at work to chargers for multi-family housing, said Alexandra Wyatt, policy director and legal counsel at the nonprofit GRID Alternatives. “It’s extremely crucial to build that out in an equitable way and not just to build it out, but to maintain it.”
Buttigieg declined to say how many public chargers the administration hopes to deploy by the end of 2024, citing in part the complexity of ensuring those chargers are made in the US. “We’ve kind of been the foot of the hockey stick because we are still aligning the program guidance and the Buy America rules and the regs on how interoperable and user friendly they needed to be, which is important before states can start moving money,” he said. “Now that we have the rules and we have the money, you’re going to see I think a leap.”
((Updates with comment from Leilani Gonzalez.))
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