It took multiple General Assembly sessions, but this year the body has created a road to electric vehicle charging station investments for rural locations.
Del. Rip Sullivan, D-Fairfax County, has carried the bill for four years, arguing that most of Virginia’s EV charging stations are within a mile of interstates 81, 64, 66 and 95. With more EVs on roads and more to come, it makes sense to provide charging stations in farther-flung areas, he says.
His bill passed both the House and Senate last year, but the General Assembly had no budget for it. This year, it passed in both bodies again, and budget negotiators agreed to provide $1.5 million to fund it. The bill, HB 1791, will go to Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has until March 24 to take action.
The money establishes a fund that private developers could tap into for grants that would cover up to 70% of nonutility costs including labor, equipment, foundations, driveways and surface markings to install EV charging stations in areas with low population density and higher-than-state-average unemployment.
“After three sessions of not getting this across the finish line, I am proud that the General Assembly has finally decided to invest in this effort,” Sullivan said in an emailed statement. “We want all Virginians to be able to participate in this transportation transition. It is equally crucial to our tourism industry that visitors from outside of Virginia know they can drive their electric vehicles to all parts of our beautiful Commonwealth.”
State parks, national parks and national forests in Virginia are among the places that would be eligible for charging stations under the bill.
This year and last, Sullivan requested $25 million for the fund. He will work to further build up the fund over the next few years, said his chief of staff, Baxter Carter. The state Department of Energy would administer the grants to private developers in a five-year program that will end July 1, 2030.
“With $1.5M, I think it is accurate to describe this as a ‘pilot project,’” said Victoria Higgins, Virginia Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which has been involved with the legislation.
It’s unclear which areas of the state would be eligible, Higgins said in an email.
In last year’s session, 78 of the commonwealth’s 95 counties — including localities throughout Southwest and Southside Virginia — and multiple small cities in those regions would have been eligible under population and unemployment metrics. This year’s bill has new eligibility parameters related to existing charger infrastructure, which the energy department will need to assess, Higgins said.
Public utilities could put their own charging stations in the commonwealth, too, according to another bill that came out of the General Assembly last week.
HB 2087, from Sullivan’s colleague Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax County, is also headed to Youngkin’s desk. Under that bill, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power would be allowed to build and operate charging stations, but not too closely to privately owned ones. The State Corporation Commission would determine that radial distance by June 2027, with an order due by Dec. 1 of that year.
Appalachian will wait until after the SCC makes its distance determination rule, then “reexamine the opportunities to own and operate charging stations in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” spokesman AEP George Porter said in an email exchange.
Dominion has no plans to compete in the fast-charging EV business, spokesman Craig Carper said. With this law, the utility would look to address “pockets of Virginia where it’s really barren, you know, in terms of access to these kinds of chargers,” he said.
[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]
Comments are closed.