Los Alamos County’s Board of Public Utilities on Oct. 22 received a detailed presentation from Stantec on a two-part project that lays out a fleet conversion plan for county vehicles and a communitywide public electric-vehicle (EV) charging strategy. The consultants said the work is intended to help the county close a gap created by the New Mexico clean car rule and to guide near-term investments in vehicles and charging infrastructure.

The presentation described a three-phase timeline for county fleet electrification through 2050, a site-suitability analysis for public chargers (home, county-owned, privately shared Level 2 and fast chargers), and a draft implementation approach that will be presented to the board again in December. Stantec told the board it will deliver a final report in February, with an interactive financial/capital-planning tool for county staff to run scenarios.

“The goal of this project is to generally reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from the county’s fleet vehicles,” Stantec consultant Josh Schott said during the briefing, noting the New Mexico clean car rule as a policy driver for higher EV adoption. Stantec project manager Annalie Castillo described a vehicle-level, dynamic dashboard built for county staff: “We developed a very innovative and dynamic tool that is not gonna be able to be utilized by the county staff to not only track your current fleet and attributes, but also be able to keep track of that implementation of the 0 emission part of the fleet,” she said.

Stantec outlined the study’s methods and preliminary results. For fleet conversion, consultants combined departmental interviews, on-site electrical assessments, a market scan of commercially available vehicles, and modeling of vehicle assignments and charging needs. For public charging, they layered demand indicators (population density, EV travel patterns), parcel-level suitability (utility infrastructure, land ownership, wetlands and federal land exclusions) and community feedback gathered via a May visioning session and an online survey of about 516 respondents.

The consultants showed four charging scenarios and resulting suitability maps: home charging (residential patterns), county-owned charging (priority on county parcels and facilities), privately shared Level 2 charging (multifamily and commercial sites), and fast/highway-style charging (corridor and long-distance travel). They also modeled feeder-by-feeder electrical load growth under multiple EV adoption scenarios; in the highest adoption scenario Stantec reported an estimate of up to 18,000 EVs in the county by midcentury in their most aggressive projection.

Board members pressed Stantec on key uncertainties and local data. Board member Trey Gibson said relying on statewide EV-adoption percentages risks underestimating local demand: “Los Alamos just isn't very representative of the state in many respects,” he said, urging the team to use locally specific vehicle and household data if possible. Stantec said the low-adoption scenario is based on current New Mexico trends and that higher scenarios incorporate incentives and the clean car rule; the consultants agreed to time-stamp vehicle-registration figures and to follow up with the board about comparator communities used for adoption assumptions.

Several board members asked about inclusion of transit and school bus fleets. Stantec said Atomic Transit’s bus projections were incorporated into the public-transit load but that school buses were not modeled because the local school district indicated it had no near-term plans to procure electric buses. “They have been included as part of this study, though,” a Stantec presenter said regarding transit buses, and the presenters said they would clarify which bus fleets and which parcels were included in the final report.

Board members also sought more granular residential data—for example, parcel-level counts of housing units and whether units have garages—so the team can better estimate how many households can charge at home versus will require public charging. Stantec said the modeling begins with parcel and zoning data, Replica travel-pattern data and public survey pins, and that the team will try to incorporate any additional county assessor or housing-unit data that can be provided. “We did start with the exact locations of each address,” a consultant said, and the team said they would attempt to include garage/driveway data where available.

Equity and rate design were recurring themes. Board members and staff asked how costs and user rates for public chargers would affect access for residents without home charging. Stantec said a separate financial tool will show year-by-year capital and operating cash flows and allow sensitivity testing of different rate and utilization scenarios; the team said the intent was to identify needed capital and the funding gap rather than to exclude sites for purely economic reasons. “There is a flexibility to assess how that model changed with different rates,” Stantec said.

Other clarifications Stantec offered: the team has done electrical feeder-level projections to identify where upgrades may be required; the study divides fleet/infrastructure work into replacement-strategy, operational suitability and funding timing; and the project’s public-engagement record includes in-person and survey input that produced a map of preferred public-charger locations concentrated around Los Alamos and White Rock.

No formal action or vote was taken; the board spent more than an hour asking technical and policy questions. Stantec said it plans to return in December with a draft report and to hold an additional public meeting before delivering a finalized plan in February. The consultants emphasized that the county will receive an interactive dashboard and financial model to update assumptions over time and to help staff pace vehicle and infrastructure purchases.

Board members asked for several items to appear in the draft: a timestamp and sources for vehicle-registration data, explicit lists of comparator communities used for adoption scenarios, clarification which bus fleets (Atomic Transit vs. school buses) were included, and incorporation of parcel- or assessor-level garage/carport data if available. The consultants agreed to follow up on those items and to incorporate board feedback into the draft.

Next steps: Stantec will submit a draft plan to county staff, present the draft to the Board of Public Utilities and to the County Council (consultants suggested a December presentation), hold another public meeting, and then produce a final plan in February that will be open for public comment and will include the county-facing tools Stantec described.

No vote or formal board direction on implementation or funding was taken during the presentation; board members repeatedly noted that capital costs for both vehicles and chargers will be significant and that grant and other funding sources will be required to meet an ambitious conversion timeline.