LONGVIEW—Rural highways often lack electric vehicle charging stations, posing a dilemma to Washington’s push for higher use of electric vehicles as a key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 while also balancing the costs of these changes.
Experts have agreed electric vehicles have limited pollution. Officials are beginning to address this rural-urban divide, where people in Cowlitz County are buying more and more electric vehicles than in the past but are still not at the level of places like King County. Some say this could be partly because there are too few electric vehicle charging stations between Vancouver and Seattle.
Washington plans to prohibit the sale of most non-electric vehicles by 2030 and is offering grants targeted at more rural communities to assist them in reaching this goal. Longview city officials have shown some support for policies to electrify its public transit; in 2022, the Cowlitz Transit Authority voted to end RiverCities’ diesel-only policy.
A shortage on public roads? Not necessarily.
A map from the Washington State Department of Transportation of charging stations in Washington shows three in the Longview area and one in Cathlamet, as well as a Tesla supercharging station in Kelso.
The Interstate 5 corridor remains empty of public-use stations between Longview and Centralia.
Compared to other states, Washington has more public charging stations along public roads, according to data from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. For every 1,000 miles, there are at least 10 of them, according to the data.
Stations are typically managed by individuals, so tracking them is not within the control of the local utility district, said Alice Dietz, spokesperson for the Cowlitz Public Utility District.
Cowlitz County’s utility district does not have current plans to add new charging stations that are not related to the PUD’s facilities, said Dietz. They own one customer-facing charging unit with two charging ports, and the costs of maintenance — electrical infrastructure, operations, the charger itself — has to be recovered somehow, Dietz said.
“The PUD is evaluating the best way to support EV charging in the county,” Dietz said in an email. “We encourage anyone considering installing EV charging to reach out to the district early, so that we can work together to identify infrastructure needs and potential opportunities to support grant applications. At this time, the district has no plans to own or manage charging stations not related to our facilities.”
A 2017 analysis from the U.S. Department of Transportation determined that an electric-vehicle driver should not be any farther than 3 miles from a charging station. The closest charging stations to the Kelso location are a few miles away in Longview, but few populate the I-5 corridor between Kelso and Castle Rock.
Each Washington property owner has to pay a share to cover the state’s electric vehicle incentives program, but some areas have used these more than others.
Dietz said the utility district cannot say for sure whether there are enough usage stations now.
