A new survey from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy finds that only six states currently have policies encouraging or requiring equity and environmental justice considerations to be built into new programs for rolling out electric vehicle chargers.

According to the report, since 2012, utility commissions in 25 states and D.C. have approved almost $2.4 billion to accelerate the electrification of transportation by putting a total of 200,000 charging stations in cities and along highways. Almost all the approved programs include some provisions aimed at ensuring chargers get into low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities, but carve-outs and other programs for these underserved neighborhoods may only total about $646 million, most of which is being spent in California and New York, the report says.

In other words, said Peter Huether, senior research analyst for transportation at ACEEE and the report’s author, a lot more work needs to be done. He says ensuring equity is incorporated into EV infrastructure planning and programs is critical “because investments in charging infrastructure will shape communities’ transportation options for decades to come.”

But making equity a central focus requires a change in thinking about what residents in LMI neighborhoods actually want and ensuring their active involvement in program design and development, Huether said.

“There’s been a shift in the whole climate-energy space, toward thinking more holistically about things, about equity and putting equity first,” Huether said. “It’s not just light duty vehicle-focused; it’s taking a very public view, looking at the whole system.”

For example, offering rebates for EVs and chargers may not be the most effective way to build interest and support for transportation electrification in low-income communities, the report says, because most residents in these areas do not have access to “charging-capable parking” — dedicated parking spaces with outlets within 20 feet.

Rather, the report suggests that utilities, regulators and local governments first work on electrifying public transportation and ride-sharing services that are often the primary modes of transportation in LMI neighborhoods. Los Angeles launched an EV car-sharing service, BlueLA, in low-income communities in 2018, and the service continues to expand. Low-income residents can enroll for as little as $1/month and get a 25% discount on rental fees.

With the health impacts of air pollution a major concern in LMI communities, electrification of heavy- and medium-duty trucking may also be a priority. LMI communities are often located near major sources of carbon emissions and other pollution — sea and airports, refineries and power plants, and highways and other trucking routes — and as a result have higher rates of heart disease and asthma.

The issue became a major driver for Puget Sound Energy when it started talking about potential EV pilot programs with community organizations in its service territory.

“Our initial assumption was that all of our pilots would be focused on light-duty vehicles,” said Mackenzie Martin, community projects manager at PSE. “We heard overwhelmingly from the community that they’d love to explore medium- to heavy-duty pilots as well.”

The utility is now rolling out several pilots aimed at electrifying medium-duty vehicles for tribal transportation services and the fleets of home weatherization companies. In some instances, chargers are being installed where the fleet is based; in others, at a public spot where drivers can pull in and charge up during a lunch break, Martin said.

‘Don’t be Afraid to Slow Down’

Utilities’ efforts at community engagement fall along a continuum from essentially ignoring and marginalizing local voices, to fostering full participation in planning and decision-making, the report says. To some extent, this uneven performance may be attributed to the risk-averse nature of utilities and the ongoing inability of both utilities and regulators to keep up with the pace of adoption of new technologies like EVs.

Surveying 61 utility filings on EV program plans, ACEEE found almost half had no plans for actively engaging LMI communities in program development. About a third included public meetings — a relatively low level of community engagement — while only eight had committed to doing a full community needs assessment, and 10 said they would provide training and advice.

The report points to guidelines for community involvement developed by the nonprofit Greenlining Institute, which puts a strong emphasis on “capacity building” to ensure LMI residents and organizations have the resources and skills needed to fully participate in stakeholder proceedings.

“The reality is that so many communities barely have the capacity to conduct their own scopes of work, let alone to participate in some kind of community engagement or public participation process to figure out where should electric vehicle chargers be installed,” said Hana Creger, the group’s senior program manager for climate equity. “We have to build the capacity of communities to participate in those processes, whether that’s contracting with community-based organizations to conduct outreach or paying residents to participate in those processes. Every single program needs to build in technical assistance.”

In the case of PSE, the community engagement process significantly extended the development and planning process for the utility’s pilot programs, from an initial filing in 2018 to the first project rollouts beginning this year, Martin said.

Her advice to others: “Don’t be afraid to slow down and really look for and ask for that community feedback. Had we not slowed down, I don’t think we would have learned as much as we did, both about the needs of the community but also how to address potential barriers they face.”

Looking Beyond Income

President Biden’s massive infrastructure plan includes $174 billion to put more Americans of all economic classes in American-made EVs, which they will be able to charge on the plan’s proposed national network of 500,000 EV chargers to be installed by 2030. While the plan calls for 40% of all investments to benefit low-income and disadvantaged communities, how money is allocated and to what programs will likely be questions with continuously evolving answers.

To begin with, as the ACEEE report points out, official definitions of LMI, disadvantaged and environmental justice communities vary widely between states, affecting which communities get help and the level of funding and services they receive.

Looking beyond income, “these decisions should be informed by both input from communities and overarching state equity, air quality, climate and mobility goals,” the report says. “Adding criteria around race, tribal status or pollution burden to income requirements … would allow programs to better target the neediest individuals and rectify some wrongs in current transportation systems.”

Equity carveouts are only a first step and should be tracked and monitored to ensure they have the desired impacts across multiple benchmarks, Creger said. “Every single electric vehicle charging infrastructure should be kind of a lifeline to creating high-quality jobs and opportunities,” she said. “It’s not enough to assume that these benefits will trickle down to communities. We really have to target them,” she said.

ACEEE analyzed the data collected and tracked for the EV programs of 12 utilities, and again found uneven performance. Seven were tracking engagement with LMI communities, while only three were tracking the number of chargers installed in these neighborhoods. Only one utility was tracking the percentage of chargers installed and the number of applications and amount of rebates paid in LMI communities.

Creger now believes upfront incentives to spur EV sales should be limited to those that target the LMI market. Incentives that spurred sales among early and mostly well-off adopters were “OK 10 years ago when they were trying to get the market off the ground, but it’s 2021 now; the market is officially off the ground.”

“We need to begin to reform and retire those clean vehicle incentives, and the ones that we do actually retain have to be specifically targeted to low-income people,” Creger said. “We have programs that do that really well; they are just very underfunded and have really long wait lists.”