Why one state is punching above its weight on EV chargers
How good is EV charging right now? Let's take a look at one indicator.
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local & state climate action.
I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this newsletter grows by word-of-mouth. Someone share or forward this edition with you? Sign up here. You can also read and share this edition online
(Kaedi Sanchez plugs in her car at a city of Albuquerque electric vehicle charger. Photo by Craig Fritz via Sandia Labs on Flickr)
About 9% of all new cars and trucks bought in the US were electric last year and as EVs became more prevalent, I was curious if states’ charging networks could keep up.
It’s a hard thing to quantify, especially with different road networks, prevalence of home chargers, types of cars (and charging speeds). There’s also fairly chunky concentrations of EV ownership within states — like the way new EV sales seem to follow I-80 in California.
One figure is fairly easy to find: the number of public chargers per capita — or how many spots to charge a car compared to the number of people who live in the state. In late 2020, Vermont topped this ranking. But a lot has changed in three years, so I recently reran the numbers myself.
As you might expect, California is up there, with 111 chargers per 100,000 people. While Washington, DC now has the highest per capita, Vermont is still in the lead among its fellow states — and it’s not close.
At 142 chargers per capita, Vermont outstrips other states like Massachusetts and Colorado. One of the reasons for this high ranking is because there’s just fewer people who live there, making it easier to get a high per-capita figure. But similarly-populated and also rural Wyoming finds itself midway through this ranking, at 40 chargers per 100k; and neighbor New Hampshire is even lower than that. So why has Vermont held on to the top of this particular measure of EV infrastructure for so long?
Transportation has historically been the largest single source of Vermont’s emissions (although that fell ever so slightly below building heating in 2020) so focusing on cars and trucks makes sense, Matthew Smith from Drive Electric Vermont, a public-private partnership to support EV adoption in the state, told me.
“[We] know EV adoption and reducing transportation emissions means ensuring access to EV chargers everywhere, including the small towns, rural villages, and mountainous terrain that make Vermont, well, Vermont,” Smith says.
Lawmakers in the aggregate seem open to electric cars and supportive of connected policies — Vermont Governor Phil Scott’s new official car is apparently a F150 Lightning truck, replacing a gas SUV.
Smith specifically cited a few policies, including state funding programs for charger installation that have been around for about 10 years, a car dealership EV training and sales program, and their own technical assistance program.
Vermont's small size also means "far greater collaboration among many stakeholders," says Patrick Murphy, the sustainability and innovations project manager at the state Department of Transportation. That includes municipalities, utilities, businesses and institutions, and an interagency workgroup "which has guided public investments in [chargers] for several years now."
A history of paying attention and deliberate policy has helped Vermont's installations, but I’d caution against assuming the state is a comfortable spot when it comes to its charging network. A more useful measure of how effective a state’s charging network is right now may be chargers per registered EV (which we should have the data for).
And looking toward the future, Vermont may just be doing the best among a category of not good enough. A recent federal study projected a need for 1.2 million public chargers by 2030. There are currently about 162,000, and 27% of those are in California.
Federally subsidized charging projects from the infrastructure bill are starting to get installed now and businesses are starting to pilot more gas station-esque concepts. By next year, Vermont may no longer hold this specific crown.
More local climate action stories
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- New Jersey passes law to expand community solar programs (NJ Spotlight)
- Once known for its pollution, Pittsburgh becomes a poster child for climate consciousness and a different kind of stormwater preparation (Inside Climate News)
- Washington state’s cap on carbon is raising billions for climate action. Can it survive the backlash? (Grist)
- How Texas polluters classify big facilities as smaller ones to avoid stricter environmental rules (Texas Tribune)
- The neglected clean heat we flush down the drains (BBC Future)
- Status update: Electricity was the primary reason US emissions dropped in 2023 (Canary Media) (or as Heatmap calls this report: “some not-terrible emissions numbers”)
- Americans are about to see tens of millions of dollars in new ads for fossil fuels (Guardian)
- Lots of electric school buses coming to suburban Washington, DC (Energy News Network)
- In this Florida development, nobody pays an electric bill (Washington Post- gift link)
- ‘What Corruption Gets You’: How Utility Companies Bought Support in the Black South (Floodlight/Capital B)