Connecticut’s vehicle fleet should be all electric. There’s no reason to wait.
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has published a disappointingly anemic plan to electrify transportation in our state. The overdue EV Roadmap has been put out in the face of a climate and health crisis that will only be worsened by its lack of significant recommendations.
The plan is a roadmap to business as usual, one that refuses to own the urgent need for transformative change.
The risk calculus behind this EV Roadmap is all wrong. Our true risk lies not in the prospect of misguided actions, but rather in the disastrous outcomes that will be caused by inaction. In its insistence on the need for further analysis, the EV Roadmap represents a classic case of “analysis paralysis” — akin to pulling back the reins on a horse when the barn is on fire. The time for studies and analysis is long past. We need bold, systemic changes. Not business as usual, but rather the opposite.
The DEEP should flip its state fleet electrification transition plan on its head. The current goal is for 5 percent of Connecticut’s new state-owned vehicles to be electric in 2020. That is far too modest; instead of such complacent incrementalism, let’s commit to all new fleet vehicles being 100% battery electric or plug-in hybrid electric, with exceptions made only in cases where electric aren’t available.
The need to get there couldn’t be clearer or more urgent. Reducing atmospheric CO2 is a climate emergency. We’re at 417 parts per million, and scientists have warned us that 450 ppm is the required limit to prevent calamitous warming. Transitioning the fleet to electric will help us deliver on our commitment to zero-emissions vehicles and honor Gov. Ned Lamont’s “Lead by Example” executive order, which directs executive-branch state office buildings and vehicle fleets to help meet our statutory goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent (from 2001 levels) by 2030.
Air pollution is a public health emergency. In the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, high particulate pollution has been linked to increased mortality from the virus. Communities suffering the highest air pollution — namely, those near major roadways, fossil fuel-run energy plants and industrial factories — are disproportionately impacted.
For Connecticut, this emergency hits close to home. The American Lung Association’s “State of the Air 2020” Report Card awarded every county in our state an F in ground-level ozone pollution.
Many will wonder who’s going to pay for this investment in our sustainable future. Any answer needs to keep the fuller picture of the true cost in mind. Electric vehicles have a lower total cost of ownership than gas and diesel-burning vehicles, and they don’t externalize costs to society in the form of air pollution and greenhouse gases.
The formula for avoiding climate-related catastrophes is simple: Invest today so you don’t have to absorb a greater cost tomorrow. Meanwhile, there are pots of money waiting to be tapped for EVs and charging infrastructure, most notably the next tranche of the state’s $55 million Volkswagen Emissions Settlement funds, which henceforth should be exclusively awarded for battery electric vehicles (not diesel vehicles, as DEEP has done in the past).
Further, we need to crack open the battery electric vehicle market by giving consumers the freedom to choose the car they want to buy, regardless of whether it follows our antiquated dealer-franchise model. As for the CHEAPR rebate program that DEEP offers consumers buying or leasing electric vehicles, let’s get it updated to reflect the used EV rebates approved last year.
It’s time to rapidly upend business as usual and electrify all transportation. Even better, let’s appoint a sustainability czar to oversee and coordinate the state’s transformative development into an economically prosperous, environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive society. This is no time for going slow. The cost of delaying, of taking cautious baby steps, will be reckoned in human lives.
Source: courant
