By VICTOR SKINNER
THE CENTER SQUARE CONTRIBUTOR
(The Center Square) — North Carolina officials have submitted a plan to spend an expected $109 million in federal funds to build a network of electric vehicle charging stations along the state’s major highways, though some believe the effort is better left to the private sector.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation submitted a statewide Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan to federal officials last month as part of a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program in the infrastructure law approved by Congress last year.
The law provides nearly $5 billion over the next five years to help states create a nationwide network of 500,000 charging stations spaced out every 50 miles along designated alternative fuel corridors, of which North Carolina expects to receive up to $109 million.
The Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plan is also a component of Gov. Roy Cooper’s mission to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Gov. Cooper ordered 1.25 electric vehicles to be registered, and half of vehicles sold in North Carolina to be electric, by 2030.
Currently, North Carolina has a total of 1,408 electric vehicle charging stations across the state, though that figure does not include Tesla chargers that are only available to Tesla owners. While many are within NEVI program guidance that requires locations within a mile of identified alternative fuel corridors, only 10 comply with a requirement that each station have four or more chargers with 150 kilowatt capacity.
The EV plan identifies a total of 3,831 miles of alternative fuel corridors in the state, with 1,549 miles already meeting federal requirements and 2,283 “pending corridors” eligible for grants. Corridors considered ready include sections of Interstates 26, 40, 85, 485, 77, 87 and 95 along with U.S. Highways 74, 52, 64, and 70.
The plan calls for two phases to spend NEVI funds, the first to build 33 stations and 132 chargers through fiscal year 2024, and a second to focus on community-based charging in urban and rural areas.
North Carolina officials hope to fund Phase 1 of the plan with federal funds for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, expected to be released upon federal approval. Phase 2 would be funded by leftover Phase 1 money, as well as federal allocations for fiscal years 2024, 2025, and 2026.
The state expects to spend a total of more than $112 million on site costs and nearly $10 million on operation and maintenance costs over the five years, with 80% coming from the federal government and 20% from a required cost share match for grant applicants.
The EV infrastructure plan follows legislation introduced in the General Assembly last session that aims to crack down on publicly funded charging stations.
House Bill 1049, introduced by Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, would require stores that offer free electric vehicle charging stations to disclose what the service is costing customers and would ban free charging on state properties that do not also offer free gasoline and diesel. The bill is currently in the House Committee on Transportation.
Jon Sanders, director of the Center for Food, Power, and Life at The John Locke Foundation, has also repeatedly pointed out the downsides of the government directed shift to EVs and infrastructure to support them.
“Electric vehicles have been around for a long time now. If EVs were a truly market-supported phenomenon, it wouldn’t take mandates, decrees, financial incentives, and press releases touting ‘extraordinary cooperation’ between state, federal, and local governments to provide charging and other necessary infrastructure,” he said. “Risk-taking enterprisers would see money-making opportunities and voluntarily provide all of that on their own initiative, in the hopes and expectation that customers would voluntarily do business with them.”
“By way of comparison, we haven’t seen bureaucrats from all walks of government puzzling together how and where to place gasoline stations,” Mr. Sanders said. “That’s because the private sector is really good at that sort of thing in serving people’s needs and wants. With highly limited knowledge but seemingly unlimited hubris, central planners are terrible at it, as history has proven over and over again. They’re even worse when they try to manage dictating what product people must use by dictating how other people must provide the support infrastructure for it.”
