Governors from nine Western states last week signed a memorandum of understanding to create an “integrated and interoperable” network of zero-emission vehicle infrastructure to support travel and commerce throughout the region.

The agreement was the signature achievement of Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s one-year term as chair of the Western Governors’ Association (WGA), which includes leaders from the 18 westernmost states in the continental U.S., Hawaii and the three U.S. territories in the Pacific.

In addition to Oregon, the states signing the MOU were Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Washington.

Brown, an advocate for electrifying Oregon’s transportation system and wider economy, last year adopted the Electric Vehicles Roadmap Initiative as her chair’s initiative. Her goal: to reach an agreement to establish a shared set of principles for EV infrastructure planning and create voluntary standards to ensure that chargers are widely accessible and usable by EV drivers. (See Ore. Governor Plots Western Roadmap for EVs.)

In her keynote speech for the WGA’s virtual annual meeting on Wednesday, Brown touted the collaboration behind the initiative, which entailed “work sessions, webinars, podcasts and countless phone calls and meetings.”

“In total, we revealed a common set of infrastructure, financial and logistical challenges that affect EV planning for the private sector, utilities and Western states,” Brown said. “Regardless of whether thousands, hundreds or a few dozen public EV charging stations are present in a particular state, EV design manufacturing, sales and infrastructure deployment all represent an incredible economic opportunity across the West.”

In keeping with the tone of her speech at last December’s WGA meeting, Brown made no mention of the environmental aspects of EV adoption. She instead focused on the potential economic benefits to Western states, likely a concession to the spirit of regional bipartisanship expected to prevail among WGA governors with widely divergent views about how to address climate change.

“The Electric Vehicles Roadmap Initiative recognizes that we all agree that the expansion of electric vehicle infrastructure is an economic imperative for our states. This mutual understanding promotes collaboration across the aisle and throughout the West to elevate and energize an issue that states are already working on both individually and collaboratively,” Brown said Wednesday.

Those collaborative efforts include the West Coast Electric Highway, an agreement among California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to build a network of fast-charging stations every 25 to 50 miles along Interstate 5 and U.S. Route 101 “to allow electric vehicles users to travel the length of the West Coast with the same certainty they would have if they were driving a gas vehicle.” Farther inland, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have joined up to create the Regional Electric Vehicle West Plan to facilitate EV travel in the Intermountain region.

The roadmap process worked to extend that collaboration, bringing together EV manufacturers, charging station developers and state and local agencies to develop findings on best practices for developing charging network infrastructure. Those findings, set out in a special report released Thursday, include:

• • • Jurisdictional authorities should streamline zoning reviews by designating EV chargers as an “accessory land use.”
    • Authorities “should make permit application documents available to be downloaded and submitted digitally with the ability to provide electronic signatures.”
    • States should clarify that permitting reviews for EV charging stations are limited to health and safety requirements found under local, state and federal laws, and that local aesthetic requirements do not meet this threshold.
    • States and utilities should provide local authorities with educational materials on EV charging technologies and related planning considerations.
    • Siting partnerships between gas stations and charging station developers can eliminate the need for local traffic studies.

The report also lays out recommendations for the federal government, encouraging Congress and the Biden administration to:

• • • use multistate partnerships to deploy federal EV infrastructure funds;
    • promote flexibility within the Federal Highway Administration’s Alternative Fuel Corridors Program;
    • enhance EV infrastructure at federal rest areas;
    • support the U.S. Department of Energy Clean Cities Coalition program; and
    • create efficient permitting and siting practices for EV infrastructure installations on federal lands.

“Congress and the administration should pay particular attention to the bipartisan, federally oriented recommendations we have developed and how they can be integrated into legislative measures and agency planning,” Brown said.

“Our state agencies will continue this partnership to ensure that end users have a consistent and reliable experience regardless of where they are traveling throughout the West,” Brown said. “And even though this MOU isn’t the right step right now for all WGA states, I continue to remain extremely excited that we all understand the economic importance of electric vehicles and are working to develop the infrastructure necessary to tap into the full potential of EVs.”