Vermont transportation officials: EV charging network advancing but $20M in NEVI funds at risk

Vermont transportation officials told the House Committee on Environment & Energy on Feb. 18 that the state has made early progress building high-speed electric vehicle charging along highway corridors but faces a setback after federal reviewers paused approvals for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program.

Andrea Wright, environmental policy manager at the Agency of Transportation (VTrans), said the state has built one NEVI-compliant fast-charging site in Bradford and has made awards or selections for additional locations. "The biggest obstacle to the EV transition is the cost of the vehicles. But a close second is EV charging and the confidence that people have that EV charging will be available, accessible, reliable, and that they can use it where they need it," Wright said.

The context: Vermont’s 2020 Global Warming Solutions Act and the Climate Action Plan direct large greenhouse-gas reductions from the transportation sector, and the NEVI funding from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is designated to help build DC fast charging along federally recognized alternative-fuel corridors. VTrans officials described targets recently revised by the legislature: spacing goals moved from a 50-mile maximum between chargers to 25 miles, and the prior guideline of locating stations within 1 mile of interstates was revised to 3 miles to reflect site availability and safety.

What officials told lawmakers: Wright and Patrick Murphy, state policy director at VTrans, reviewed the agency’s corridor prioritization (traffic volumes, where people live and work, and multifamily housing density) and charging-technology standards. VTrans’s minimum DC fast-charge standard for corridor sites is a 50-kilowatt-per-port baseline, with a program preference for sites that can deliver 150 kW per port and a minimum of capacity equivalent to four 150 kW ports (the agency noted that can be delivered as multi-port 350 kW chargers that share power). Officials said typical corridor sites often require transformer and service upgrades, including three-phase power, which raises installation costs.

On federal funding: Wright said Vermont received a $21 million NEVI apportionment but has obligated "less than a million" and that roughly "$20,000,000 is at risk" while the U.S. Department of Transportation reconsiders plan approvals and guidance. She said VTrans has issued stop-work orders on the set of roughly 11 additional locations that together represented about $8–9 million in awards; the Bradford site is proceeding. Wright said the pause stems from federal rescission of prior plan approvals, which in turn prevents the state from drawing subsequent yearly apportionments until new plans are approved.

Capacity and projections: Using available deployment data and an alternative-fuel planning tool, VTrans staff said current public and planned charging ports exceed near-term need based on current EV registrations (the agency reported an outcome of about 912 planned level-2 ports versus an assessed need of 550 in the current-registration scenario). However, under a scenario that models the Climate Action Plan’s higher-adoption target (roughly 126,000 EVs by 2030 referenced in committee discussion), staff estimated a remaining gap of about 25 public fast-charging ports to meet that 2030 scenario and produced a rough cost estimate of about $21.5 million to close the modeled shortfall. Wright emphasized that private investment in charging will continue to play a role and that the state estimate is not necessarily wholly state-funded.

State fleet and garages: Committee members pressed officials about whether state vehicles will be able to travel statewide on electric power. VTrans said it is developing a fleet transition plan and working to add charging capacity at district garages where three-phase power is available. Wright and Murphy said some vehicle classes used by the agency — heavy-duty plow trucks and specialized utility vehicles — are not yet widely available as electrified models, so electrification will follow use-case analysis and vehicle availability.

What it means for H.125: Committee members said VTrans has data useful to H.125’s reporting goals (the bill would create a snapshot of the state’s energy transition progress). Wright said VTrans already provides annual EVSE deployment data to the transportation committees and expects to submit similar metrics to the state’s measuring-and-assessing-progress framework being developed by the Climate Action Office.

The committee did not take formal action on H.125 during the hearing. Officials said maps and deployment tables that VTrans has supplied to the legislature and the public could be used to populate a required report should the bill advance.