As part of its COVID-19 rules, the city of Los Angeles is prohibiting rent increases for tenants in rent-controlled buildings. Elsewhere rents have gone up by double digits in recent months.
Infrastructure Bill's EV Charger Funding a Good Start,
but More Funding Likely to be Needed to Meet Growing
Demand
IHS Markit expects US infrastructure bill to supplement only
66 percent of required US EV charger growth through 2026
Today President Joe Biden signed into law the $1.2 trillion
infrastructure bill. The bill is expected to support the automotive
industry in many ways, from improved road conditions, cleaner
commercial vehicles, electric vehicle battery factories, battery
recycling, and lithium mining and refining. However, one of the
largest EV appropriations will be toward vehicle charging. Some
$7.5 billion has been allocated to alternative fuel charging,
primarily for electric vehicle chargers and supporting
infrastructure across the country.
IHS Markit estimates that the US federal investment will
directly contribute to the construction, maintenance, and operation
of approximately 400,000 newly installed Level 2 AC and Level 3 DC
Fast chargers in the US between 2022 and 2026. Under the details
outlined in the bill, chargers must be open-sourced, meaning
funding cannot go to Tesla's proprietary Supercharger network,
unless it opens it up to non-Tesla vehicles.
However, IHS Markit believes this investment is unlikely to meet
the growing demand of the US plug-in EV fleet. Along with the
nation's current electric vehicle charging infrastructure of
100,000+ chargers at 50,000 publicly available locations, IHS
Markit estimates there will need to be about 600,000 additional
chargers installed at another 100,000 public locations by 2026.
The figure does not include the 3.2 million domestic, private
Level 2 chargers expected to be installed in residential homes -
mostly in garages - over the investment period.
This bill represents the first large-scale national investment
in EV charging infrastructure. "The Biden administration's
investment isn't hyperbole and will have a significant impact on US
electric vehicle charging supply," said Mark Boyadjis, IHS Markit
global automotive technology lead. "However, even an investment at
this scale will come up short against the rapid growth of electric
cars hitting the road soon, pointing to a need for additional
support from municipal, utility, and private investments to fill
the gap."
IHS Markit expects that the EV Vehicles in Operation (VIO) on the
road in the United States will increase from 1.5 million in 2020 to
about 9.3 million units in 2026. IHS Markit estimates that the
nation needs approximately 700,000 cumulative chargers by 2026 to
meet that demand, and the 400,000 that the US bill will support is
not enough to get us there entirely. During the 5-year investment
period, Federal subsidies are only expected to fulfill two-thirds
of what is required to energize the future EV fleet in the US.
Additionally, IHS Markit forecasts EV battery capacity to
steadily increase over the coming years. "This will allow the
average EV to travel further on a single charge, in principle
lessening the need for such abundant infrastructure, said Graham
Evans, director, automotive supply chain & technology, IHS
Markit. "However, from a consumer perception perspective, abundant
EV charging is needed to encourage skeptical consumers that a BEV
is workable for them."
75 percent of US EV owners prefer to charge at home, but a
successful transition to a national electric vehicle fleet requires
a way for those without that capability to charge in a convenient
manner at public facilities. Overall, only 63 percent of US
households have access to a garage and that figure is less in urban
areas where more than 50 percent of EV sales occur. "If EVs remain
impractical for apartment, condo, and historic home dwellers, we
cannot adequately reach the administration's stated EV goals," said
Colin Bird-Martinez, automotive consulting principal analyst, IHS
Markit.
The bill sets aside $5 billion to be granted to states to deploy
EV charging stations in US; and $2.5 billion in grants to public
entities to deploy publicly-available EV charging, hydrogen
fueling, propane fueling, and natural gas fueling infrastructure
through 2022-26.
Anthony Arundel, co-author of Harnessing public research for innovation in the 21st Century: An international assessment of knowledge transfer policies, discusses the main gaps in our understanding of how knowledge transfer works and key considerations for policymakers in crafting effective knowledge transfer policies for the future.
The price of carbon can vary widely. Compliance carbon trading systems have pricing based on local economies and systems, but even voluntary market prices...
1. Yieldcos
Yieldcos allow individual investors like you and me to invest in building wind, solar, and battery farms. Renewable energy companies use Yieldcos to...
Glasgow’s Climate Action Story By Gavin Slater, Head of Sustainability, Neighbourhoods & Sustainability, Glasgow City Council The City of Glasgow has experienced constant change and evolution. In 1765, James Watt, while walking on Glasgow Green, conceived of the separate condenser to the steam engine and, thus, set about an acceleration of the evolution of the industrial age and inadvertently enabled the acceleration of climate change. In the years that followed, Glasgow became an industrial powerhouse. The ripples from that one moment in time here in Glasgow lapped the shores of the entire world, changing it just as much as it transformed us. Since then we have generated new ways of urban living, but with them has come the generation of the greenhouse gases that have […]