California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed investing more than $1.5 billion in zero-emission vehicles to accelerate their adoption as part of his $227 billion budget plan released Friday.
Newsom’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2021-22 would allocate $1 billion to ZEV infrastructure, including charging and fueling stations for battery powered electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs).
The spending plan calls for securitizing revenues from vehicle registration fees to support the expansion of the California Energy Commission’s Clean Transportation Program. A portion of the proceeds would fund loans “to leverage additional private sector capital to build the necessary infrastructure,” the governor’s office said in its summary of the plan.
Another Newsom budget provision would allocate $465 million in one-time cap-and-trade funds for incentives, rebates and financial assistance “to improve access to new and used zero-emission vehicles,” including heavy-duty equipment and buses, it said. The plan would put $50 million toward the installation of ZEV charging stations at state-owned facilities.
The huge cash infusion is meant to help the state meet Newsom’s order in September that all new passenger cars sold in the state must be emissions-free by 2035 and that all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold in the state must be ZEVs by 2045.
It comes on top of hundreds of millions of dollars already invested by the state to bolster ZEV adoption.
The Energy Commission (CEC), for example, allocated $116 million for hydrogen fueling stations in December. And in August, the California Public Utilities Commission authorized $437 million to fund the installation of 38,000 charging ports for EVs through Southern California Edison. (See Hydrogen for FCEVs Gets Big Boost in California and CPUC OKs 1.2 GW of Storage by 2021, 38,000 EV Chargers.)
To meet Newsom’s mandate — and to comply with a 2018 executive order by former Gov. Jerry Brown of having 5 million EVs on the road by 2030 — the state needs to install millions of chargers and double its pace of electric vehicle sales, researchers told the CEC in August. (See California Needs Huge Number of EV Chargers.)
The proposed funding would boost the scale of ZEV adoption and allow lower-income residents to drive EVs, the budget summary says.
“A focus on equity prioritizes public investments in communities suffering most from a combination of economic, health and environmental burdens,” it states. “A focus on scale brings down the transition cost, accelerates private capital investment and reduces the need for direct public investment.”
The plan also recommends doing away with property taxes for ten years on new ZEV charging stations completed by Jan. 1, 2024.
The California Hydrogen Coalition, among others, praised the governor’s plan, saying its “recommendations for hydrogen infrastructure are an important investment in this practical, zero emission technology.”
Newsom’s plan will be subject to revisions in May and needs approval from the heavily Democratic state legislature by June 15.