DOT announces $623M in EV grants to expand charging network
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration announced on Thursday it had awarded $623 million in grants to build out the nation’s electric vehicle (EV) charging network.
The grants will help meet the Biden administration’s goal of creating a network of 500,000 publicly available EV chargers by 2030. With EV sales quadrupling since 2021, the number of publicly available charging ports has grown by nearly 70 percent. The grants are part of the $2.5 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Discretionary Grant Program, and will fund 47 EV charging and alternative fueling projects in 22 states and Puerto Rico, including the construction of an estimated 7,500 EV charging ports.
The Federal Highway Administration said it awarded $311 million to 36 “community” projects that will invest in EV charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure in urban and rural communities. Another $312 million in funding will go to 11 “corridor” recipients whose project are along the Alternative Fuel Corridors crisscrossing the country. These projects will fill in the gaps along the core national charging and alternative fueling network.
Among the grant awards was $15 million for the City of El Paso, Texas, and El Paso Electric to design and install a total of 74 EV charging ports at publicly accessible locations, including multi-family dwellings, retail businesses and community centers.
“We are thrilled to contribute our expertise, and resources to the City of El Paso, the County of El Paso, the University of Texas at El Paso, and other stakeholders, to make the El Paso EV Charging Infrastructure Program a reality,” says Jessica Christianson, Vice President of Sustainability and Energy Solutions at El Paso Electric.
Christianson said the award marked a milestone toward advancing sustainable transportation and reducing carbon emissions. “Electric vehicles are key to reducing our collective environmental impact, and this initiative aligns perfectly with our vision for a cleaner, more sustainable future for our region.”
Other grant awards in Texas included $70 million to the North Central Texas Council of Governments to build up to five hydrogen fueling stations for medium- and heavy-duty freight trucks in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. The project will help create a hydrogen corridor from southern California to Texas.
In addition, $15 million was awarded in Washington State for Energy Northwest, a joint operating agency, to install 40 fast chargers and 12 Level 2 chargers across western Washington and northern Oregon. And a $15 million award will go to the Maryland Clean Energy Center to build 87 EV charging stations in urban, suburban and low- and moderate-income communities across the state. Proposed sites include Coppin State University, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in Baltimore, and 34 disadvantaged communities with multi-family housing.
The CFI program is in addition to the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) formula program to build the “backbone” of the EV charging network, which has already seen new charging stations opening in Ohio and New York. Stations in Pennsylvania and Maine have already broken ground. The investment by the federal government into EV chargers joins more than $155 billion in private company investments into the EV and battery supply chain.
“Every community across the nation deserves access to convenient and reliable clean transportation,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The Biden-Harris Administration is bringing an accessible, made-in-America charging network into thousands of communities while cutting the carbon pollution that is driving the climate crisis.”
