POLITICO’s E&E News provides an in-depth look at why the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program’s electric vehicle (EV) charger buildout is progressing so slowly, to the frustration of agency officials and lawmakers from both parties. The program was authorized in 2021 under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). To date, only 19 NEVI-funded charging stations have come online in nine states, according to the federal government’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. However, that agency’s executive director, Gabe Klein, predicts that the pace of installations will increase and the program’s impact will peak between 2026 and 2028.
The E&E News article is largely informed by a panel discussion at last month’s EV Charging Infrastructure National Conference in Detroit, co-hosted by the National Association of State Energy Officials, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. The range of conference participants explains one of the difficulties with the program’s implementation: “It requires collaborations between the worlds of energy and transportation that are newly minted.” State DOT’s, the drivers of program implementation, are unaccustomed to working with energy companies and utilities on projects “intimately tied to the electric grid, or on private property.”
Two other drags on progress are highlighted in the article. One is the inevitable complexity of managing a program with multiple stakeholders, including federal and state agencies, private host businesses, landowners, electric companies, and charging-network providers. The other, “the single biggest bottleneck in building a charging station is getting the electric utility to build the necessary interconnections to supply at least 600 kilowatts of power, the minimum necessary for a NEVI station.” The program’s challenges for power providers are significant and not easily overcome.