NRDC – Driving Out Pollution – How Utilities Can Accelerate the Market for EVs

NRDC – Driving Out Pollution – How Utilities Can Accelerate the Market for EVs

To realize this potential, we need utility policies to unleash greater investments in charging infrastructure and other programs that expand EV adoption in a manner that supports the grid and returns the value of doing so to EV drivers. Utility policies to accelerate the EV market can be broken down into three phases.

Phase 1 removes barriers to EV purchases, facilitates a competitive market for third-party charging services, prepares utilities to integrate EV load, and encourages drivers to charge in a manner that avoids adverse grid impacts and maximizes their fuel cost savings relative to gasoline. Phase 2 focuses on infrastructure, equity, and education programs to accelerate the EV market and increase access to electricity as a transportation fuel. Phase 3 develops managed charging programs so that EVs can facilitate the integration of renewable energy and provide other grid services, and returns the value of such services to EV drivers to further accelerate the market.

Phase 1 presents the most pressing issues, but the foundations for Phase 2 and Phase 3 must be laid today in order to realize the long-term benefits of widespread EV adoption. Now is the time for utilities and utility regulators to act. Short-term delays could result in a near-impossible task in the future, as it takes decades to turn over the nation’s vehicle fleet. It is estimated that traffic pollution causes more than 50,000 premature deaths annually in the lower 48 states, which is more than 1.5 times the deaths from traffic accidents on an annual basis. The electric industry should move quickly to bring forward the environmental and economic benefits of moving America off oil—once and for good.