U.S. Department of Transportation Announces $623M in Grants for Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
On January 11, 2023, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced $623M in grants to expand electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. The grants are part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program and have been made available to fund 47 EV charging and alternative fueling infrastructure projects in 22 states and Puerto Rico. Ranging from $500,000 to about $68.3M, 36 of the grants were awarded to EV charging and hydrogen fueling “community” projects in rural and urban communities, while the remaining 11 grants were awarded to “corridor” projects focused on fueling along roadways to assist in establishing national EV charging and alternative fueling networks.
The recently announced grants are intended to make EV charging more accessible nationwide, and the Biden administration previously announced a goal of ensuring the installation of at least 500,000 publicly available EV chargers by 2030 as demand for EVs, and the infrastructure that supports them, increases. Some estimates indicate that there will be 26.4M EVs on U.S. roads by 2030, with the substantial increase in EVs pushed in part by state prohibitions, like California’s Advanced Clean Cars program, on the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines. Across the board, EVs and EV infrastructure continue to draw attention from both state and federal governments, and the new grant announcements have come hand in hand with new tax credits from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for consumers and businesses that choose to install EV chargers and a renewed emphasis by state legislatures on electric grid reliability as more people and businesses begin to use EVs.
Interested stakeholders — from EV manufacturers to lithium ion battery recyclers who play an important role in recovering critical minerals critical for EV batteries — should stay tuned to the latest EV and EV infrastructure developments as more grant opportunities from the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program become available and demand for EVs grows.
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