Like the state, Vancouver’s largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions comes from transportation. To meet state-mandated emissions reductions and clean fuel standards, as well as its own climate goals, Vancouver is developing an electric vehicle infrastructure strategy.
“We are working on a citywide electric vehicle infrastructure strategy to really help define the city’s role and where the gaps are and where the needs and priorities of the community are around building up electric vehicle infrastructure, specifically around charging,” said Stacey Dalgaard, associate climate project coordinator for Vancouver.
City staff began with research, specifically looking at strategic plans used in other cities. They’ve also talked with other cities about how they’ve approached infrastructure needs.
“What model are they adopting? Are they owning chargers? Are they leasing? How are they locating them? We’ve been doing a lot of best practice research and talking to everyone working on this in different areas, whether it’s public works, whether it’s the electrician servicing these, whether it’s the planners, all of that to see what’s working in other communities,” said Kate Drennan, transportation planning manager for the city.
Community input is also vital, Dalgaard said. A business-specific survey aimed at non-home-based businesses, property owners and managers with the potential to host or site EV chargers, commercial or residential developers and multifamily housing providers is live and closes at the end of the month. A general survey open to residents is planned for this spring.
“We’ve been looking at where charging is and where it’s not. What you tend to see, and we have here in Vancouver, is that the charging infrastructure really concentrates in areas that are commercial areas that have a lot of traffic,” Dalgaard said. “EV chargers can be a significant investment, so as private entities are developing them, they’re looking for locations where they have high turnover in those spaces. And that leaves some gaps.”
Those gaps tend to have a greater impact on EV owners living in higher density housing, such as apartments or condominiums, and lower-income neighborhoods.
“We can see that … in our lower-income communities and in neighborhoods with more apartment buildings, there are fewer (publicly available) chargers,” Dalgaard said. “We know from other data as well that that’s the biggest need, for people to be able to charge near home, near where they live so they can charge overnight.”
Not having a charging station close to home can and does prevent some drivers from switching to electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, she said.
But the work the city is doing now to develop an infrastructure strategy is about more than what people are driving, Drennan said, adding the city’s goal isn’t for everyone to switch to an EV.
“When we think about electric mobility, transportation and electrification as a broader idea, there are a lot of benefits to our community overall around air quality, economic inclusion and economic development for where these chargers could go and how they could draw people to different parts of our city,” Drennan said.
Drennan said there are a lot of considerations when deciding where to build and install EV stations.
“One of those is different user types and what their needs are. There’s a different location for a charger that someone needs because they have range anxiety. They haven’t bought an EV yet because they’re not sure they can get around town, but they do have a garage they could charge in at night. And then there’s a very different need, we call it necessity charging, which is those folks who don’t have a place at home to charge regularly,” Drennan said.
Charging while shopping at a big box store, sitting at a coffee shop or while at work may be suitable for some necessity charging needs.
“That’s something we want to better understand as we go out for community engagement. That will be a really core part of those questions that we’ll be exploring with the community and trying to understand where the need is, what exactly the need is,” Drennan said.
The city also wants to ensure it is building on and complementing the work others, including Clark Public Utilities and the state Department of Commerce, are already doing to install EV chargers.
Last year, the state launched a $100 million program to build 575 new EV charging stations with 5,780 charging ports across the state. More than 3,000 of those ports will be installed at apartment complexes. Quarterly carbon auctions from the state’s Climate Commitment Act would fund the program.
Like most charging stations, a majority of the new ports are Level 2 chargers, which can take up to eight hours to reach a full charge. By comparison, fast-charging ports can reach a full charge in as little as 20 minutes but are more expensive to build and harder to find.
According to the state Department of Commerce, Level 2 chargers cost $5,000 to $10,000 per unit while fast chargers cost $75,000 to $100,000 per unit. The state pays $7,500 per Level 2 unit, and $85,000 per fast charging unit. The remaining costs are paid by private investors, local governments, public utilities or others.
Recent actions by the Trump administration have put the state’s plans for EV chargers along Interstate 5 at risk. Washington was set to receive $71 million to build chargers along I-5 and other roads, but the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program was put on hold in February.
“Being strategic early on so that this transition happens in an equitable way, and that everyone can share in those benefits as they evolve and as people can take advantage of them is an important early part of our strategy that we’re trying to keep in mind and keep centered in the work that we’re doing,” Dalgaard said.
