Most of America’s 107,000 gas stations can fill several cars every five or 10 minutes at multiple pumps. Not so for electric-vehicle chargers – at least not yet. Today, the U.S. has around 43,000 public EV charging stations, with about 106,000 outlets. Each outlet can charge only one vehicle at a time, and even fast-charging outlets take an hour to provide 180 to 240 miles worth of charge; most take much longer.
And the chargers are very unevenly distributed; almost a third of all outlets are in California. This makes EVs problematic for long trips. “Range anxiety” about longer trips is one reason electric vehicles still make up fewer than 1% of U.S. passenger cars and trucks.
This uneven, limited charging infrastructure is one major roadblock to rapid electrification of the U.S. vehicle fleet, considered crucial to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
It’s also a clear example of how climate change is an infrastructure problem.
Over many decades, the U.S. has built systems of transportation, heating, cooling, manufacturing and agriculture that rely primarily on fossil fuels. The greenhouse gas emissions those fossil fuels release when burned have raised the global temperature by about 2 degrees with serious consequences for human lives and livelihoods, as the recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change demonstrates.
The new assessment shows that minimizing future climate change and its most damaging impacts will require transitioning quickly away from fossil fuels and moving to renewable, sustainable energy sources such as wind, solar and tidal power.
Gas-powered vehicles with internal combustion engines have completely dominated American road transportation for 120 years, and along with it a nationwide system to support vehicles powered by fossil fuels.
Gas stations are only the endpoints of that enormous system, which also comprises oil wells, pipelines, tankers, refineries and tank trucks – an infrastructure that also supplies manufacturing, agriculture, heating oil, shipping, air travel and electric power generation.
To achieve maximal climate benefits, the electric grid won’t just have to supply all the cars that once used fossil fuels. Simultaneously, it will also need to meet rising demand from other fossil fuel switchovers, such as electric water heaters, heat pumps and stoves to replace the millions of similar appliances now fueled by fossil natural gas.
The 2020 Net-Zero America study from Princeton University estimates that engineering, building and supplying a low-carbon grid that could displace most fossil fuel uses would require an investment of around $600 billion by 2030.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, now before the U.S. House was originally designed to get partway to that goal. It initially included $157 billion for EVs and $82 billion for power grid upgrades. In addition, $363 billion in clean energy tax credits would have supported low-carbon electric power sources, along with energy storage to provide backup power during periods of high demand or reduced output from renewables. During negotiations, however, the Senate dropped the clean energy credits altogether and slashed EV funding by over 90%.
Of the $15 billion that remains for electric vehicles, $2.5 billion would purchase electric school buses, while a proposed EV charging network of some 500,000 stations would get $7.5 billion – about half the amount needed, according to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
As for the power grid, the infrastructure bill does include about $27 billion in direct funding and loans to improve grid reliability and climate resilience. It would also create a Grid Development Authority under the U.S. Department of Energy, charged with developing a national grid capable of moving renewable energy throughout the country.
As of now, the infrastructure bill – if approved at all – looks like a small but genuine down payment on a more climate-friendly transport sector and electric power grid, all of which will take years to build out.
But to claim global leadership in avoiding the worst potential effects of climate change, the U.S. will need a much larger commitment.
Paul N. Edwards is a fellow in international security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Distributed by The Associated Press.
