BFRW committee tables EV-charging prescriptive change after weeks of technical debate

BFRW committee members on the State Building Code Council on Friday tabled action on a proposed rewrite of electric-vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure provisions, saying they will post an updated editorial draft and continue technical work at future meetings.

The committee voted to table consideration of the EV-charging language and directed staff to post a cleaned Word version of the draft for review; the committee will revisit the item at subsequent June and July meetings. The committee did not adopt substantive changes at the June 13 session.

The proposal under discussion would replace the existing prescriptive percentages for EV-ready and EV-capable parking spaces with a three-column, phased approach (0-year / 5-year / 20-year) commonly described in the meeting as 10/10/40 in the final column and intended to align with projected EV adoption. Todd Byreuther, a committee presenter, said the three-column approach is intended to ‘‘anticipate a 20-year horizon of EV adoption’’ and that the 10+10+40 columns are cumulative to reach about a 60% adoption assumption statewide. He also described the blue edits on screen as largely editorial and intended to bring the state code terms closer to ICC/IECC…