New York’s push to electrify its transportation system will require a “massive” job training effort and public policies sharply focused on putting more electric vehicles on the road, experts said last week.

Rather than adopting a business-as-usual approach to the phase-in of EVs, the state should accelerate the goals expressed in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), said Jared Snyder, deputy commissioner of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

The CLCPA mandates that the state consume 70% renewable electricity by 2030, 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040, and reduce emissions 85% by midcentury from 1990 levels.

“We’re going to be talking about policies that accelerate the transition so that by 2035 we’re seeing 100% electric vehicle sales, with a goal that by 2050 practically all cars are going to be electrified,” Snyder said Thursday at a meeting of the New York Climate Action Council’s transportation advisory panel, which met to discuss zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) job training requirements and adoption strategies that it might recommend to the Council.

A similar transition will be necessary for trucking, he said, “so we need to think about how do we accelerate that workforce transition at the same time,” he said.

Electrification of the transportation sector is helping attract young talent into the industry in New York, according to Porie Saikia-Eapen, director of environmental sustainability and compliance for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency managing public transportation in the New York City area.

“We are getting a lot of young people interested in coming to work for public transit — environmental scientists coming straight out of college,” Saikia-Eapen said.

Back to Basics

The coming wave of EVs will require “a massive training component” for both technicians and drivers, said Kendra Hems, president of the Trucking Association of New York.

New York aims to have 850,000 EVs on the road by 2025, up from about 100,000 now, and two million by 2030. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) runs ChargeNY, a program to support the adoption of EVs with incentives such as rebates, as well as utility and geographic data on vehicle sales and the installation of charging stations.

The state’s Public Service Commission last July approved over $700 million to install more than 50,000 light-duty EV charging stations throughout the state through 2025. (See NYPSC Approves $700 Million for EV Chargers.)

Internal combustion engine technology has changed so dramatically over the years that the number of computers onboard a vehicle to measure timing and atmospheric conditions and adjust the engine all became a real training issue for technicians, said Steve Finch, senior vice president of the American Automobile Association in western and central New York.

“All those were ‘additive’ technologies, whereas what we’re talking about now with electrification is a total disruption to that industry,” Finch said. He recounted that AAA recently got a call for a Tesla vehicle that had run out of charge on the side of the road, but the tow truck driver didn’t know how to hook up the vehicle to move it.

“We’re not talking about repairs to the engine — he didn’t know how to pick up the vehicle and put it on the flatbed truck to move it,” Finch said.

Kerene Tayloe, director of federal legislative affairs at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said the evolution to ZEVs will happen in cycles, so the workforce training strategy for a midcareer worker should be different from how schools prepare a 10-year-old student for transportation-related work.

“We have to reach children now, because they are going to be the workforce of the future,” said Paul Allen, senior vice president with M. J. Bradley & Associates consultancy.

Allen also wrote in the chat area of the webinar that the power industry has an ongoing program with the U.S. military services to bring qualified, highly skilled workers into complex technical jobs — helmets to hardhats — which could be a good source of well-trained midcareer workers for green transportation.

Forward Strategies

Adam Ruder, NYSERDA project manager for transportation R&D and market development, presented on two strategies to encourage development of the EV market: one for transitioning to 100% zero-emission light-duty vehicles and the other for switching to medium- and heavy-duty EVs. (See related story, NY Considers Rulemaking for Medium to Heavy ZEVs.)

“These are two of the strategies we think will have a great impact on overall transportation emissions, but these alone are not going to achieve our 2030 and 2050 goals,” Ruder said. “We will need contributions from the other policies under consideration, as well as the ones focused on system efficiency and other alternative tools.”

The role of utilities elicited differing opinions on the proper parameters for utility engagement.

New York’s six local distribution companies split over whether to adopt “passive” or “active” approaches to managing EV charging in proposals submitted to the PSC in December. (See NY Utilities Diverge on Managed EV Charging.)

As a general rule, Allen said, increased electric revenues actually depress electric rates for all ratepayers, so the net-net economic impact of moving to electricity as a fuel for transportation is going to tend to lower electric rates across the state for all ratepayers, “especially given the way the PSC is likely to look at the issue.”

Some of the debate about the role of utilities is policy-related, said Elgie Holstein, senior director for strategic planning at the Environmental Defense Fund.

“We’ve been approached by national organizations representing service stations, dealers, and also that rather large group that represents convenience store operators, and they don’t want electric utilities involved in this business at all,” Holstein said. “They don’t want electric utilities investing in charging stations, and they want federal prohibitions that prevent it. I don’t know where that’s headed, and I don’t think we’re going to support that, but they’re trotting out all kinds of claims that costs to consumers and ratepayers will go up if electric utilities are allowed into this space.”

The role of the utilities is not necessarily owning charging stations, but in New York, that role is already being defined through the make-ready order that was passed in May 2020 by the PSC, Ruder said. (See NYPSC Launches Grid Study, Extends Solar Funding.)

He said the upgrades are necessary for reliability purposes “and for ensuring that there is a managed charging capability.”

“If someone wants to use electricity, the utilities in this country have an obligation to serve them. I’m aware of what these national organizations are saying, and I just think they have their facts wrong in many instances,” he said.