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This story was originally published by Canary Media.
One of California’s marquee programs for cleaning up transportation emissions is at a crossroads. Decisions made in the next few months could set the decade-and-a-half-old Low Carbon Fuel Standard on one of two very different paths.
One path, favored by fossil fuel and renewable natural gas interests, would lock in a market scheme that currently extracts billions of dollars per year from Californians at the pump and subsidizes crop-based and cow-manure-derived biofuels.
That would be a disaster, according to environmental advocates, who point to a growing body of scientific evidence showing that this approach, if extended until 2045 as proposed, would cause these biofuels to grow at a scale that would harm the climate and the environment.
The other path, proposed by environmental groups, transportation-decarbonization analysts and climate and energy researchers, would limit the scope of unsustainable biofuels in the program, and instead reorient it to support what experts agree should be California’s primary clean transportation pathway: electric vehicles.
To date, roughly 80 percent of LCFS funding has gone to combustion biofuels rather than electric vehicles. That’s simply incompatible with the state’s EV ambitions and needs, said Adrian Martinez, deputy managing attorney of nonprofit advocacy group Earthjustice — and the imperative to reduce emissions from transportation, which account for nearly 40 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’ve got to eliminate our reliance on combustion,” he said, but “the program as designed will continue to provide lucrative incentives for combustible fuels well into the future.”
The regulator in charge of the LCFS program — and this high-stakes decision — is the California Air Resources Board. CARB’s board, which comprises 14 voting members, 12 appointed by the governor and two by the state legislature, holds a host of responsibilities around California’s energy transition. Those include shaping the state’s nation-leading EV policy, as well as determining its broad plans for achieving long-term greenhouse-gas reduction goals.
Critics say the LCFS program’s increasing support for biofuels is in direct contrast to both the EV targets and the climate goals also overseen by CARB — and that the program has been captured by deep-pocketed industries trying to greenwash the continued use of combustion fuels.
CARB has a chance to reform the program with an upcoming vote, initially set for this month, but now postponed to an undetermined future date. But its pathway to fixing the problems that plague LCFS is murky and messy at best.
Right now, the staff managing the LCFS program hasn’t given CARB board members an opportunity to pick a climate- and EV-friendly alternative. Instead, a December staff proposal provides only one option for the board to vote on later this year: a set of policies that Earthjustice forecasts would direct $27 billion over the coming decade toward biofuels and worsen effects on the climate, the environment and the prices that Californians pay at the pump.
CARB does have another option, however — an alternative proposal laid out by CARB’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, created to advise the board on environmental-justice issues.
That proposal would cap the fast-growing share of crop-based renewable diesel flooding the state. It would also end the unusual structure that now allows biogas produced by dairy farm manure to offset a much higher amount of carbon emissions than any other source of alternative fuels.
And, importantly, it would make the core of the program — its carbon-offset marketplace — function in a much healthier way, proponents say. A torrent of cheap, polluting renewable diesel and dairy farm biogas credits have dragged down the price that LCFS credits can fetch for avoiding emissions, diluting the incentive to deploy new climate technologies and sapping what could be a key funding source for EV infrastructure in the state.
“The stakes are very, very high,” Martinez said. “That’s why you see so much attention focused on this — and a very broad and diverse coalition that is pushing for more systemic change to the program, versus more modest tweaks that will really just keep this market owned and dominated by fossil fuel interests.”
California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard was born out of AB 32, the 2006 law that created the state’s carbon cap-and-trade market. Much like carbon markets, LCFS is meant to make companies pay for their carbon emissions by buying credits from technologies that reduce carbon emissions.
The program requires all fossil fuels refined and sold in California to meet increasingly stringent carbon-intensity targets. In practice, fossil fuel producers have to buy a bunch of LCFS credits from low-carbon transit sources operating in the state in order to comply. The goal is to create a system that taxes planet-warming fossil fuels to fund cleaner transportation alternatives.
But the LCFS has strayed from its initial focus on vehicle electrification and “advanced” non-crop-based biofuels to become “a swag bag for venture capitalists, big oil, big agriculture, and big gas, increasingly coming at the expense of low- and moderate-income Californians.” That’s how Jim Duffy, a 13-year veteran of the agency who served as branch chief of the LCFS program from 2019 to 2020 and retired in 2022, described the evolution of the program in comments filed with CARB.
Under the LCFS regulation adopted in 2009, dairy-manure-to-biogas projects did not receive special treatment compared to other sources of methane such as landfills and sewage treatment plants, Duffy wrote. Similarly, diesel fuels made from crops like soybeans were considered “only marginally better than fossil diesel.”
But in the years since, “the LCFS was revised to provide additional and unnecessary support to landfills and first-generation crop-based biofuels” and “to mitigate the methane problem created by the dairy industry itself,” Duffy wrote — despite the fact that evidence increasingly suggests that both sources harm the planet far more than they benefit it.
The result has been an increasing share of LCFS credits being supplied by renewable diesel and dairy-generated biogas.
CARB has justified these shifts with analysis indicating they will yield net positive climate impacts.
“The proposed amendments now under consideration will directly increase the program benefits in the most burdened communities, by reducing the carbon across the supply chain for fuels sold in California, as well as improving public health for fuels sold in California,” CARB spokesperson Dave Clegern said in an email to Canary Media. He cited data from CARB staff’s analysis of its proposal indicating that, by 2045, its plan will reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 25,586 tons, cut greenhouse gas emissions by 560 million metric tons and yield public-health cost savings of nearly $5 billion.
But critics say the agency is failing to account for the full scope of climate harms that will be caused by its continued emphasis on biofuels.
They warn that the sheer scale of California’s program — totaling some $4 billion per year — is driving investment in the wrong transportation alternatives. The consequences are dire, they say — not just within the state, but across the country and around the world.
Take renewable diesel, a fuel made from fats and oils processed to be identical to fossil diesel fuel. The U.S. increased production of the fuel by 400% between 2019 and 2022, and it is set to double it again this year, according to Jeremy Martin, senior scientist and director of fuels policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Unlike ethanol and biodiesel, which can only partially replace gasoline and diesel, renewable diesel has “no limit on how much can be blended,” Martin said. It could theoretically completely replace diesel fuel for trucks, buses and other vehicles. And California’s LCFS offers credits on top of the federal incentives the fuel receives, making the state the primary target of renewable diesel producers across the country.
As a result, the share of renewable diesel as a percentage of total diesel fuel use has skyrocketed in California compared to the rest of the U.S., as the chart below shows.
In a September meeting, Steven Cliff, CARB’s executive officer, highlighted a milestone for the LCFS program: As of mid-2023, California had “more than half of our diesel demand being met by non-petroleum-based diesel alternatives. This is a direct result of the LCFS program, and it’s bringing real climate and air-quality benefits to the state.”
In Martin’s view, that milestone is not a win, but a warning. It indicates that renewable diesel is “flooding the LCFS, drowning the policy — and it doesn’t make sense” on climate or environmental terms.
Once the demand for renewable diesel outgrows the supply of waste oils and other non-crop feedstocks that can be used to make the fuel in genuinely climate-friendly ways, it becomes highly likely that it will cause more greenhouse gas emissions than it will displace. Critics like Martin argue that demand has now reached this point, though it’s a contested question.
This additional demand for crop oils could mostly serve “to expand the cultivation of palm oil to replace the soybean and other oils made into fuel,” the Union of Concerned Scientists argued in comments to CARB. That, in turn, is likely to lead to more rapid deforestation in nations that produce large amounts of these crops, such as Brazil and Indonesia — an outcome that would cause far greater climate harms than whatever emissions reductions result from replacing fossil diesel.
To stop this, the Union of Concerned Scientists and other groups want CARB to set a limit on how much renewable diesel can receive LCFS credits. CARB staff’s proposal declines to set such a cap, citing renewable diesel’s climate and health benefits.
But CARB’s methodology is out of step with the latest science, according to multiple groups studying these issues. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for its part, says CARB’s analysis is “based on inaccurate claims of climate and air-quality benefits and associated health outcomes.”
In a recent comparison of five different models for evaluating the climate impacts of crop-based biofuels, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that only CARB’s own model shows a positive carbon-reduction impact.
And while the agency has a proposal to limit deforestation harms by setting “sustainability guidelines” for crops being used for renewable diesel, it applies only to feedstocks grown in the U.S., Martin noted. That’s a problem: California is on pace to consume 10 percent of global soybean oil supplies for renewable diesel, meaning a significant amount of the crop oil produced for the program will be grown under conditions CARB cannot police, he said.
Given that reality, Martin said, “If California declines to act — if they say, ‘This is evidence of success; look how little fossil diesel we’re using’” by replacing it with renewable diesel, “then, in fact, California is giving its support to a fuel that we know is unsustainable at these volumes.”
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration reportedly plans to give automakers more time to meet its ambitious tailpipe emissions rules meant to speed electric vehicle adoption. (New York Times)
POLITICS: Republican policy advisers detail how President Trump will reverse the Biden administration’s progress on clean energy deployment and regulating fossil fuels if the Republican wins this year’s election — as Democrats rush to protect Biden’s progress. (Reuters, Politico)
FINANCE: More financial firms back out of climate commitments, saying the promises could expose them to legal challenges. (New York Times)
OVERSIGHT: Federal energy regulators approve new cold weather reliability standards for grid operators and affirm they’ll continue reviewing liquefied natural gas export applications despite the Biden administration’s pause. (Utility Dive)
STORAGE: Federal regulators deny proposed pumped hydropower storage projects’ permits on the Navajo Nation and establish a new policy of not issuing preliminary permits for projects on tribal land if the tribe opposes it. (KUNC)
OIL & GAS:
GRID:
SOLAR: Texas’ massive solar buildout is accelerating the transition to renewables in other states like South Carolina, where companies are using power purchase agreements and renewable energy certificates to source solar power from Texas. (CleanTechnica)
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A Philadelphia family’s poor health and anxiety after living next to a former refinery has led to what psychologists are calling environmental trauma, an increasing mental health concern. (Inside Climate News)
EMISSIONS: Michigan environmental groups criticize DTE Energy’s voluntary carbon offset program for natural gas customers as a marketing ploy and a way for the company to profit with business as usual. (Michigan Public)
COMMENTARY: Southern officials who cut their teeth on coal remain stubbornly committed to fossil fuels in the form of natural gas, resulting in a plan to build the South’s largest gas pipeline in more than a decade, writes a columnist. (New York Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A new poll suggests over half of New Jersey residents don’t think they’ll buy an electric vehicle, even though most agreed it would improve health and air quality, fearing personal and statewide economic consequences. (New Jersey Monitor, Asbury Park Press)
FUNDING:
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY: Although construction is years away for a massive wind power and transmission line project proposed for northern Maine, clean energy workforce development programs are already stepping up. (Mainebiz)
FLOODS: Parts of Boston, including Long Wharf, saw notable flooding yesterday as a nor’easter blew through southern New England, reviving conversation around potential nature-based and human-built mitigation strategies. (Boston Globe, NBC Boston)
TRANSIT: In the face of vehicle traffic issues, Rhode Island officials give $160,000 to East Providence to help the city create a bike and pedestrian master plan that builds on two existing, popular paths. (ecoRI)
EMISSIONS: New York City councilmembers discuss a proposed bill to force cruise ships to plug into onshore power rather than use onboard diesel engines while docked in the city. (Gothamist)
CLIMATE:
BUILDINGS: Efficiency Maine and the town of Brunswick strike a deal to offer better terms on energy efficiency loans to local businesses. (Times Record)
GRID: The rise of electric vehicles could threaten power grid reliability without better collaboration between utilities and charging station companies, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. warns. (Utility Dive)
ALSO:
CLEAN ENERGY: More than half of the investments directly tied to incentives from two major federal infrastructure laws are flowing to Republican-led states, while the rest is split among Democratic and swing states, an analysis finds. (CNN)
OIL & GAS:
OVERSIGHT: President Biden’s allies are anxious for the administration to finalize long-awaited environmental and emissions rules as this year’s election approaches. (E&E News)
TRANSPORTATION: Environmental justice advocates call for a moratorium on expanding highways, saying they disproportionately affect nearby communities of color through displacement and pollution. (Washington Post)
WIND: Virginia lawmakers delay until 2025 consideration of a bill to allow entities other than Dominion Energy to build offshore wind facilities, rewarding the utility’s intense lobbying against the bill and disappointing clean energy advocates. (Energy News Network)
PIPELINES: A lawyer for six landowners along the Mountain Valley Pipeline says they’ll appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after a judge dismisses their suit challenging the pipeline’s use of eminent domain to build on their property. (Cardinal News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A Chicago-area regional government agency offers communities a blueprint for upgrading electric vehicle charging infrastructure. (Energy News Network)
ALSO: A southeastern Michigan consortium receives a $60 million federal grant to advance research into electric vehicle batteries. (Michigan Public)
UTILITIES: A grid expert says Xcel Energy’s proposal to switch Minnesota customers from fixed to variable rates would be an outlier nationally because of the major gap between peak and off-hour rates. (Star Tribune)
PIPELINES: South Dakota lawmakers advance three bills that would give landowners more rights and compensation when dealing with pipeline developers, from surveying to eminent domain cases. (South Dakota Searchlight)
GRID:
CLEAN ENERGY: Clean energy groups criticize Xcel Energy’s long-term energy plan that calls for 2,200 MW of new natural gas peaking plants and keeps three waste-to-energy plants operating for a decade after their planned retirements. (Utility Dive)
HYDROELECTRIC: Michigan utility Consumers Energy plans to seek proposals this month for 13 hydroelectric dams it hopes to sell. (MLive)
OIL & GAS:
EFFICIENCY:
University Park is a small suburb south of Chicago, built around sprawling warehouses for companies like Clorox, Amazon and Solo Cup that attract a steady stream of diesel truck traffic. Its residents, 88% of whom are African American, are also exposed to pollution from a steel and wire processing facility relocated there from a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood, as well as steel mills and an oil refinery in nearby Northwest Indiana.
So, village manager Elizabeth Scott figured, the town was a prime candidate for improving quality of life and the environment by adopting electric vehicles — even if only two local households had EVs when Scott first checked the secretary of state’s website.
An EV Readiness program developed by the Chicago-area Metropolitan Mayors Caucus helped University Park catapult to being a leader in electric vehicle adoption, with the program offering a “blueprint” for preparing charging infrastructure, accessing grants and doing community outreach. University Park earned the second-highest score of a dozen municipalities participating in the first cohort to finish the EV Readiness program last year, and they were the only municipality in the region’s “Southland” to complete the program.
University Park is in the process of acquiring an EV charging station for electric semi-trucks city leaders hope will increasingly serve its warehouses, and they hope to add electric vehicles to their municipal fleet while also supporting residents to get their own EVs.
University Park’s EV Readiness website offers resources for local electric car owners and aspiring owners, from a video demonstrating how electric vehicles work to an interactive map of charging stations.
Scott, who has an electric car herself, had long noticed the vast disparity in available charging stations in the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods and suburbs on the South Side of Chicago, versus the wealthier and whiter neighborhoods and suburbs to the north.
“In Black and Brown communities there’s been a lot of disinvestment,” said Scott. “This [electric vehicle rollout] is big, it’s something new — for the world, and especially for this country.”
The truck charging station will be one of the first in the Midwest. “We’re kind of pioneers in this, this is uncharted territory,” Scott continued.
The EV Readiness program, funded by utility ComEd, offers guidance on a wide range of issues, including updating zoning and building codes to facilitate EV charger installation, training first responders in dealing with electric vehicle fires, and accessing federal and state incentives.
Municipalities receive scores for various achievements and can earn bronze, silver or gold certification through the program. Doing a fleet assessment to prepare to acquire municipal EVs helps earn silver certification, for example, and actually adding EVs to the fleet earns gold. Oak Park received a gold certification during the program’s first cohort, with the rest of the municipalities earning bronze.
The cohort of participating municipal leaders received guidance and instruction from the Mayors Caucus and met regularly.
“It was like a support group, to be able to partner with other communities, bounce ideas off one another,” Elizabeth Scott said. “I highly recommend every municipality to go through the program.”
Between October 2022 and November 2023, according to state registration data, the total number of EVs owned in the municipalities participating in the first cohort increased from 2,175 to 3,608. Hanover Park doubled its EV ownership, from 105 to 219, and Oak Park increased ownership from 581 to 904. Much-smaller University Park doubled its EV ownership — from eight to 16 vehicles.
The concept of EV Readiness was born in 2018 during public meetings around the Volkswagen vehicle emissions cheating settlement that provided funding to states for alternative fuels and electric vehicles. Metropolitan Mayors Caucus director of environmental initiatives Edith Makra noted that the majority of public comments made during that period were focused on acquiring electric vehicles.
The caucus launched the initiative with a series of listening sessions with stakeholders including the IBEW electrical workers union, fire safety officials, advocacy groups and municipal leaders. The caucus developed an EV Readiness checklist, certification program and curriculum. The first cohort of municipalities started the program in December 2022 and “graduated” in December 2023.
“When we first signed on to support this program, we weren’t fully sure what the response from municipalities would be,” said ComEd external affairs director Philip Roy. “We were kind of blown away by the interest. We have over 400 municipalities in our service territory, that are all very different — in size, makeup, resources, they all need different kinds of help. That’s where having a group like the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus that is so used to working with a broad, diverse set of municipalities is key to success.”
The EV Readiness program dovetails with an ongoing Metropolitan Mayors Caucus initiative known as the Greenest Region Compact that involves communities collaborating to develop and adopt sustainability standards.
EV Readiness also builds on the model of SolSmart, a nationwide technical assistance initiative that helps municipalities invest in and prepare for solar power, at no cost to them. Many of the municipalities in the first cohort of EV Readiness were also participants in SolSmart.
With both programs, part of the goal is to help communities be well-positioned to apply for federal grants and incentives.
“We wanted communities to be ready for the influx of funding that was on the way, we knew it was coming, we wanted to make sure they were thinking about it,” said Metropolitan Mayors Caucus sustainability specialist Cheryl Scott (no relation to Elizabeth Scott).
During the first cohort, the federal government announced the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program providing grants for EV charging under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The smallest grants available were $2 million, “more than most of our communities need,” as Makra said. And ironically the paperwork to apply for the environmental justice-focused Justice 40 mandates of the program was “a really heavy lift for most small communities,” as Makra said.
So, the Mayors Caucus worked with communities to prepare an aggregated NEVI grant application, seeking $15 million to install 114 chargers in 35 towns and two counties. Recipients have not yet been announced.
Illinois has been a leader in legislation promoting electric vehicles on the state level. The 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act created incentives for public transit electrification and EV ownership, with a goal of having one million EVs on Illinois roads by 2030. The law creates rebates of up to $4,000 for consumers who buy electric vehicles, and demands utilities pursue transportation electrification in an equitable way that does not burden customers who don’t own EVs.
Last year the Illinois legislature passed the Electric Vehicle Charging Act, which requires new single-family homes and multi-family buildings be EV capable, meaning conduit is laid to allow easy installation of chargers and wiring. State law also prohibits landlords and homeowners associations from unduly interfering with charger installation, and clarifies how renters should pay for electricity used in charging EVs.
ComEd funded the first two cohorts of EV Readiness with $225,000, and the utility is in the process of finalizing increased funding for additional cohorts, said Roy. The second cohort of the program – including 16 municipalities and two counties – is underway.
During a recent luncheon sponsored by the Executives’ Club of Chicago, ComEd CEO Gil Quiniones touted the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus’s work and the importance of EV rollout.
“We want to make sure our grid is ready, if someone wants to buy an electric vehicle today and put in a charging station,” Quiniones said. “We want electric vehicles to be an easier choice for our customers.”
He said alleviating “range anxiety” by installing more charging stations is key. Currently, there are about 2,000 level 2 chargers and 1,000 fast-chargers in ComEd’s service territory, he said.
As part of its Beneficial Electrification program, ComEd is spending $231 million on rebates and other incentives to encourage electrical vehicle adoption by municipalities and individuals.
“We recognize that municipalities are going to play a vital role in the transition to electrification,” said Roy. “Many of the policies that drive how and where infrastructure is installed are very hyperlocal policies that municipalities oversee: zoning, parking code, use of public space.”
The mayors caucus helps municipalities coordinate with utilities on EV readiness and helps them understand suggested electrical code standards and practices.
Cheryl Scott said most municipalities require permits for level 2 or fast-charging stations, but not for level 1 charging.
“If it’s the same outlet as plugging a toaster in, should the government get involved?” she asked. “Level 1 is where we saw uncertainty about how to do that. If it’s an older house, older wiring could cause problems. The owners manual (for chargers) says check with an electrician.”
“Do you permit for EV charging at a residential level or not?” added Makra. “We ask a community to think that through. Do you risk being overly burdensome, or not necessarily protecting your constituents in terms of safe installation?”
The EV Readiness program encourages communities to adopt policies going beyond the state EV charging law, and some including University Park did so by requiring new commercial construction be EV-capable.
Oak Park, a suburb west of Chicago, adopted the “most transformative” charging infrastructure policy, in Cheryl Scott’s words. The town requires a level 2 charger be installed in any new residential building with a garage or parking space, and commercial buildings and multi-family residences must have a level 2 charger for every five parking spaces. Several towns including University Park also adopted policies that commercial construction must be EV-ready or EV-capable; the state law only applies to residential buildings.
Elizabeth Scott said she’s seen interest in EVs blossom in University Park since EV Readiness launched, for environmental and financial reasons.
She said she spent $350 a month on gasoline for her car before getting an EV, since her position requires constant driving. Now, she spends about $100 a month on charging.
“It’s convenient, it’s safer, I have no catalytic converter to steal, I don’t have oil changes,” Scott noted. “But it’s really an investment in the sustainability of our future and our communities. I’m really grateful we’re able to do this as a community of color that normally doesn’t have all the opportunities.”
Virginia is on a roll transitioning to electric school buses. And that momentum could remain uninterrupted if legislators activate a precedent-setting but dormant initiative to tap into state dollars.
Freshman Del. Holly Seibold has submitted a budget amendment this legislative session asking Virginia to catch up with other states by allocating $200,000 to jumpstart the Clean Vehicle Grant Fund. It has been left penniless since Seibold’s predecessor set it up three years ago specifically to help school districts rid their fleets of polluting, noisy diesel-powered buses.
The amendment calls for moving the money — half in 2025 and half in 2026 — from the general fund to the Department of Environmental Quality. DEQ staffers would use the $200,000—nowhere near enough to buy even one e-bus—to set up a working group tasked with establishing sources of long-term state funding for the transition.
A yes or no decision by the House Appropriations Committee could be made within the next month.
Seibold, the Democrat who represents Fairfax County, was responding to a plea — and an eleventh-hour phone call — from advocate Bobby Monacella, who played a pivotal role ushering in an e-bus evolution in Northern Virginia.
“Ideally, I just want Virginia to have a consistent stream of money so school districts that want to continue to electrify their fleets after this round of federal money runs out, can do so,” said Monacella, a Mothers Out Front campaigner in Fairfax County.
Thus far, Virginia’s approach to greening its diesel bus fleets has been piecemeal. School districts have plugged into federal dollars, public-private ventures, utility programs and even bought buses directly.
For instance, 67 buses are on the road or on order in Virginia thanks to grants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded nationwide since 2022. That $5 billion for school bus electrification, folded into the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is expected to run out in 2026.
“When that federal money goes away, we have to figure out a way to pick it up at the state level so we can transition all the buses,” Monacella said about her hopes for a seamless switch. “That means convening a stakeholders work group to hash out the details of the program. So, this budget amendment is perfect timing.”
In the federal government’s eyes, Virginia is viewed as an electric school bus pioneer because of legislation sponsored in 2021 by then-Del. Mark Keam, a Fairfax County Democrat.
His original measure was stripped of its original funding source, a tax on dyed diesel fuel, used in farm machinery and other non-highway vehicles. The substitute version, passed into law, directed the state DEQ to hash out details for the grant fund via a workgroup. Neither the working group nor the financing mechanism ever materialized.
Keam, who resigned in 2022, had advanced the bill because his daughter suffered from asthma and he wanted all children to have a healthier, pollution-free ride to school.
Despite the lack of a dedicated state funding source, Virginia ranked fourth nationwide in the number of electric school buses either on the road or on order, according to data compiled by the nonprofit World Resources Institute through December.
Since 2021, several other states — including top three finishers California, Maryland and New York — have enacted either robust incentive, mandates, or both to encourage school districts to switch to electric buses.
Climate change and students’ health and safety motivated Monacella, then a volunteer activist, and other members of a joint environmental task force to spur Fairfax County into adopting a mandate in 2019 that all 1,625 buses in its fleet be electric by 2035.
Mothers Out Front carried the enthusiasm of that local victory to the General Assembly two years later to be a driving force for House Bill 2118, Keam’s bipartisan, ambitious undertaking to create a specific grant funding model for bus electrification over 10 years.
This session, Monacella decided that three years is long enough for the law to languish, unfunded.
“It’s a tribute to former Delegate Keam that Delegate Seibold has picked up the flag and carried it,” she said. “What he did was precedent-setting.”
Tish Tablan, who leads the Electrify Our Schools program at the Charlottesville-based Generation 180, is as motivated as Monacella about dedicating dollars to fleet conversions.
“State funding is necessary to support school districts in upgrading to electric buses,” said Tablan, senior program director at the nonprofit. “It’s time for Virginia to invest in protecting our children and communities from the harmful effects of diesel air pollution.”
Monacella and Seibold had discussed funding for electric school buses months ago, but nothing specific had emerged from those conversations.
A budget amendment likely wouldn’t have surfaced if Monacella hadn’t participated in an online question and answer session with legislators on Jan. 12 organized by the Virginia Grassroots Coalition.
“Being aware of the deadline for budget amendments should’ve been my first priority,” said Monacella, who only recently had become a full-time advocate. “I thought I had missed it.”
When another delegate attending the online forum told her the deadline was 5 p.m. that day, Monacella signed off and sprang into action with Seibold’s staff.
“It was kind of a crunch but we got it in there,” she said about the scramble. “I totally admit I dropped the ball. It was kind of everyone to help me recover.”
Electric school buses are roughly three times as expensive as traditional diesel ones. A basic price tag on a 77-passenger electric bus in Virginia is $368,500, compared to $120,099 for a diesel model, according to Whitney Kopanko, the electric vehicle program manager at Sonny Merryman. The Prince William-based bus dealer controls 60% of the overall school bus market in Virginia.
Through January, Fairfax County had 73 buses on the road or on the way to the district. That’s close to one-fourth of Virginia’s electric bus total of 302 — out of 16,000-plus buses in service statewide.
“I don’t know about the ins and outs of a potential funding stream,” Monacella said about the eye-popping investment needed to replace thousands more buses. “I do know we have a long way to go and the federal money isn’t going to cover that.”
She’s willing to devote the legwork to the cause in the name of curbing carbon emissions.
As evidence, Monacella “repented” for her budget amendment oversight by traipsing to the offices of House Appropriations Committee members in Richmond earlier this month to drop off flyers she designed to educate staffers about restoring Virginia’s status as a leader on school bus electrification. Seibold, who doesn’t serve on that committee, also will be nudging her fellow legislators.
“I wanted to bring it to their attention so when they sit down and sort through all of these amendments they might remember this one,” Monacella said. “I figured, why not?”
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Steel highway guardrails are not designed to withstand the force of electric vehicles, which are typically heavier than gasoline-powered cars, according to crash test data. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
CLIMATE:
HYDROGEN:
UTILITIES:
WIND: Dominion Energy receives the final two federal approvals for its $9.8 billion 176-turbine offshore wind farm near Virginia, opening the way for the utility to begin construction in May. (Virginia Business)
AFFORDABILITY: Vermont communities with low energy burdens also have the highest clean energy technology adoption rates, suggesting lower-income households aren’t getting the help they need. (Bennington Banner)
OIL & GAS:
COMMENTARY: A public policy professor says the demise of NuScale’s proposed small modular reactor project in Idaho shows the technology is too expensive and unproven and should be abandoned. (Utility Dive)
Charging electric vehicles in Massachusetts could get less expensive under a pair of utility proposals now under consideration, but advocates are arguing for tweaks they say would make the transition faster and more fair.
A 2022 state climate law requires the state’s two major electric companies, Eversource and National Grid, to submit proposals for so-called time-of-use rates offering lower prices to electric vehicle owners who charge their cars during times of lower demand hours. The utilities did so in August 2023, proposing off-peak rates they say could save users hundreds of dollars a year compared to basic service rates.
Climate advocates generally support the time-of-use concept. Lowering the cost of charging could motivate potential buyers as the state tries to hit its goal of getting 900,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030, they argue. Shifting vehicle charging to off-peak hours could also lower power use during peak times, reducing the need to fire up older, dirtier fossil fuel power plants to meet demand.
Still, stakeholders said, there is room for improvement in everything from the process of collecting public feedback to the precise calculations behind the rates.
“We are very supportive of time-of-use rates, broadly speaking,” said Oliver Tully, director of utility innovation and reform at climate nonprofit the Acadia Center. “We want to make sure these initial plans are as strong as possible.”
In considering the utilities’ proposals, the Department of Public Utilities is trying out a new strategy: They have asked the utilities themselves to collect feedback from the public. The goal is to hear from parties that might not have qualified to be formal intervenors in the case, said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
“They’re saying: We want you to talk about this and come to an agreement because the [Department of Public Utilities] process limits who’s in the room for the conversation,” she said.
While she appreciates the aim of opening the discussion to more voices, however, she isn’t confident the utilities, left to their own devices, will create enough opportunities for feedback.
“It’s not an impartial third party running the stakeholder process,” she said.
The utilities had a first meeting scheduled to take place online today, which Eversource spokesman William Hinkle called, “the first of a series.”
The timeline laid out by the utilities is also of concern to some advocates. The utilities do not want to roll out these rates before they deploy advanced meters and software, and then have a year’s worth of experience with the new system “to ensure network stability,” according to Eversource’s filing. By the utility estimates, this timeline would mean the new rate option would be unlikely to kick in before 2029.
Many advocates don’t think it’s necessary to wait quite so long, however. Other states, such as Vermont and California, have implemented time-of-use rates for electric vehicle charging without requiring advanced meters. Data from chargers or the vehicles themselves can be used to determine how much power was used for charging and when, allowing for billing at different rates.
“You can implement basic time-of-use rates without a smart meter,” Tully said. “If you allow for submetering using charging technology you should be able to accurately do that.”
Getting started now, instead of waiting for advanced metering, could also make the launch of time-of-use rates go more smoothly, said Graham Turk, a graduate research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative. Any new rate structure is going to need adjustments once it is introduced.
“The earlier they do that, the better,” Turk said. The current proposal would “just push that farther down the line when [electric vehicles] are a lot more prevalent and it’s a lot harder to do this for the first time.”
Lower rates during off-peak hours may not be enough on their own to recruit new electric vehicle drivers, many experts said. Getting the precise numbers right will be vital.
“The real challenge is going to be in ensuring that the rate structure is something that encourages people to participate, but doesn’t punish people for using electricity outside of the time-of-use rate hours,” said Priya Gandbhir, senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation.
The utilities’ filings include example numbers for what an electric vehicle charging time-of-use rate might look like, but do not propose specific rates yet, given how much could change in the market and regulations over the next five years. In each of these illustrative cases, the cost of off-peak vehicle charging is substantially lower than the cost of basic service, while the cost of on-peak charging is significantly higher.
That makes rough sense, advocates said, but when the real numbers are determined, a delicate balance must be struck. If the difference between on-peak and off-peak rates is too small, it won’t do enough to motivate more people to consider electric vehicles. At the same time, if the gap is too big, then a few on-peak charges could mean a bigger bill than under basic service rates, effectively punishing some consumers if a sudden change in schedule alters their charging times.
“Basically, when people’s bills come through at the end of the month they should be able to see some savings, regardless,” Gandbhir said. “They shouldn’t have to be perfect.”
As all these complicated decisions are made, it is essential to keep in mind the effects these changes could have on lower-income populations in the state, said Mary Wambui-Ekop, a longtime energy equity activist and co-chair of the equity working group for the state’s Energy Efficiency Advisory Council.
She worries that the overall cost of a major transition toward a new metering system and time-of-use rates could add to the already high energy burden of low-income households. In Massachusetts, households earning under 30% of the average median income pay 13% of their earnings to energy costs, as compared to 2% for households at or above median income.
“The bottom line is low-income households in Massachusetts, Black and brown households, have higher energy burdens,” Wambui-Ekop said.
At the same time, residents working multiple jobs, living in rental units, and just trying to keep up might not have the time, education, or internet access to learn about and weigh new and potentially cost-saving options.
There is precedent for this concern: Lower-income households have also been left behind in other pushes for renewable energy or energy efficiency in the state. A 2020 report by the utilities, for example, found that residents of wealthier communities were far more likely to have taken advantage of energy efficiency programs than those in lower-income areas and neighborhoods with higher populations of color.
Plans for time-of-use rates — for electric vehicle charging or beyond — must therefore include careful plans for making sure historically disadvantaged communities can share in the benefits and avoid shouldering the burden, Wambui-Ekop said.
“I am not opposed to time-of-use rates,” she said, “They are great in a perfect market. Unfortunately, the market system has not been fair to low-income households.”
The cold spell that swept the U.S. last week brought surprise snow and cold to states that don’t usually see it, but it wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland for many electric vehicle drivers.
Freezing temperatures decreased EV battery ranges and reduced charger speeds, leading to long waits at some public chargers — and a whole bunch of headlines. The problem came to a head in Chicago, where temperatures well below zero led to hours-long waits at Tesla Supercharger stations.
I live in Buffalo, New York, and took my Subaru Solterra out in some chilly temperatures over the past few weeks, including to a nearby ski hill and a snow-buried Buffalo Bills game. I got everywhere I needed to be without trouble, though I did turn off my car’s heat at times to conserve my battery range and took some slower but shorter-mileage routes. And while there wasn’t a line at my closest Level 3 charger, I only got a few miles of range while charging as I grocery shopped.
Experts say small trip modifications like those, plus a little patience and prior planning, can keep EV drivers out of cold-weather potholes.
🌨️ Keeping the lights on: A top federal energy regulator says the recent wave of winter storms highlights the need for “equitable and forward-thinking transmission solutions” that ensure power plants and lines keep working in bad weather. (Utility Dive)
🌞 The Pentagon goes solar: The U.S. military will install rooftop solar panels on the Pentagon as part of a $250 million package to reduce emissions from federal buildings. (Associated Press)
🚛 Eastbound and electric: While few medium- and heavy-duty truck drivers are piloting electric models, many who do love their smooth handling and a lack of noise and fumes. (Washington Post)
☢️ Nuclear options: Despite growing public and governmental support for nuclear power, industry experts say it’s unclear when the next U.S. reactor may come online. (Canary Media)
🤫 Greenhushing: After rising greenwashing allegations, many companies are now keeping their climate work quiet, potentially decreasing pressure on big emitters to change their ways. (Grist)
🏗️ Cleaning up cement: Cement and concrete decarbonization startups partner to push for policies promoting low-carbon construction practices and products. (Canary Media)
🚢 Methane contradictions: Climate advocates say planned liquefied natural gas export terminals contradict the Biden administration’s promised efforts to crack down on methane emissions. (Canary Media)
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