The Department of Energy is teaming up with industry partners, including Amazon, in an effort to help expand the adoption of electric vehicles, with the aim for the United States to reach its goal of completely electrifying the grid by 2030.
The effort, announced on Monday, is spearheaded by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research and development institute, with more than 500 stakeholders joining in the initiative, otherwise dubbed as “EV2Scale2030.” The collaborative was created to serve as a hub of information for the rollout of EVs.
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The program is a three-year initiative that aims to provide stakeholders with key resources, including a 50-state map visualization identifying vehicle loads, grid impacts, utility lead times, and workforce requirements and costs, along with a platform that aims to define the cross-industry processes need to support the pace of large-scale electrification by 2030, as well as a data exchange platform for fleet operators and charging providers to allow energy companies to better plan and prioritize investments in grid upgrades.
“What we’re trying to do with this is to take the next step of understanding what data is required by all parties to be ready for the electrification of transportation,” said Brett Carter, chairman of EVs2Scale2030 and an Executive Vice President of XCel Energy, one of the initiative’s founding members.
The goal of the effort is to be as comprehensive as possible when mapping out where the transition is happening in real-time — both on the national scale down to a granular, local level. Britta Gross, ERPI’s Director of Transportation, said that the institute is working as an intermediary to help bring information to help local utilities anticipate new loads coming in — and react by investing in transformers accordingly.
“Decisions and investments and actions are determined on a very local level in the utility industry,” said Gross. “That’s where things get real.” However, Gross mentioned that the information gathered from fleet operators and charging providers will be confidential, as they “have competitive businesses they are operating.”
The initiative will include electric companies, fleet operators, truck manufacturers, charging providers, and members who will coordinate with federal agencies and national labs. Trade groups that are a part of the collaboration include the Edison Electric Institute, the American Public Power Association, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, and the Alliance for Transportation Electrification.
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Amazon will be the first logistics provider to join the initiative, and founding energy companies include Austin Energy, CenterPoint Energy, Con Edison, FirstEnergy, Great River Energy, National Grid, New York Power Authority, Omaha Public Power District, Pacific Gas & Electric, Portland General Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Salt River Project, Seattle City Light, Southern California Edison, Southern Company, and Xcel Energy. Additional data collaborators include Daimler Truck North America, PACCAR, Volvo Group North America, and World Resources Institute.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill and Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act authorized billions in spending for expanding the adoption of EVs and charging infrastructure, along with tax credits for buyers. The Biden administration has pledged to transform the U.S. electric grid to run entirely on clean energy by 2035 — and the goal could make or break Biden’s promise to cut the planet’s emissions in half by 2030.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this report accidentally misidentified the Electric Power Research Institute. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
