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Gov. Paul LePage’s administration wants electric and hybrid vehicle owners to pay a new annual fee of up to $250. That could make up for the gas taxes they avoid by driving ultra-efficient cars, the argument goes. But at a legislative hearing today, early adopters of the technologies turned out in force to oppose the measure.

Department of Transportation Commissioner David Bernhardt says a wave of electric vehicles is on its way to the state.

“To build the needed infrastructure to support electric vehicles will require money, money that now is being generated on the backs of the drivers who participate in contributing to the highway fund through the gasoline tax. These are the same taxes that electric vehicles do not pay. This proposal is not meant to be a punishment,” he says.

Opponents say whether intentional or not, the measure is punitive.

“I’m telling you that this is an unfair tax on my family, and there’s no one here on this board or in the DOT who could prove me wrong using mathematics,” says Travis Ritchie, a Mechanics Falls resident who works at a garage that specializes in electric-vehicle repair.

John Fulton of North Yarmouth was one of many who said the proposed annual fee would force electric vehicle owners to pay more than they would if they drove comparable gas-powered cars — and paid gas taxes.

“I’m 70, my wife is retired also. We measured it. We do about 10,000 (miles) a year in our 2014 Nissan Leaf. This will give a whack, double over what a person in a (gas-fueled) car will pay in additional gas tax,” he said.

LePage’s administration says the fee would raise $2.5 million annually to help pay for road maintenance and make sure that electric vehicles don’t get a free ride.

The joint transportation committee could take a vote on the proposal later this month.

Autonomous and shared mobility, digitalization and decentralization of energy systems require new approaches to electric mobility, according to the World Economic Forum’s report Electric Vehicles for Smarter Cities: The Future of Energy and Mobility.

The report, produced in collaboration with Bain & Company, examines the major trends affecting the transformation of energy and mobility systems, with a special focus on cities. In this context, it considers electrification, decentralization and digitalization of the energy system, along with the shift towards shared mobility and autonomous driving.

The report calls for the urgent integration of urban-energy-mobility patterns to accelerate the ability of cities to meet climate goals, support energy efficiency and foster innovation of services and infrastructure. Combined, these could dramatically increase productivity and generate economic growth, ultimately providing great benefits to citizens.

In the US alone, achieving the transformation will quadruple value for society by 2030, a gain that could be worth up to $635 billion. As the share of journeys made by electrified vehicles increases, the energy system will see:

• A reduction in cost per mile of up to 40% as a result of increased use of electrified autonomous vehicles (AV)
• Additional flexibility for energy system management as electrified non-AV and AV fleets of public, commercial and mobility-as-a-service vehicles connect to smarter charging and ancillary services
• Lower carbon emissions driven by increased use of solar and wind energy to meet demand for the electricity required to power electric fleets

Cities leading the charge on electric vehicles

Berlin, Germany: The EUREF Campus business park hosts technology companies and research institutions, and offers charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) as well as inductive charging for fleet operation. Its microgrid uses artificial intelligence to optimize EV charging and send energy surplus back to the grid, based on dynamic pricing.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Montreal, Canada and Santiago, Chile: Have all prioritized the electrification of public transport through the public procurement of electric buses.

Dortmund, Germany: The city is developing non-financial incentives for last-mile delivery companies to electrify their fleets: EVs receive permission for extended access to the city centre.

Guangzhou, China: The city plans to speed up bus electrification and aims to reach 200,000 new units in 2018. China’s government has also announced it will develop national regulations for testing AV on public roads in cities across the country.

Hong Kong SAR: The local government encourages developers to scale-up the EV charging infrastructure. This includes solutions integrated with the smart payment system, Octopus, which is also used to access the public transport network.

Los Angeles, USA: The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) decided to switch 260 fleet vehicles to EVs. Charging infrastructure development is also under way and being integrated with decentralized solar power generation. By leasing rather than buying vehicles, the LAPD can invest in charging stations, including fast-charging stations in city centre car parks.

London, UK: The Transport for London office requires all new black cabs to be electric or emission-free, and diesel vehicles will not be permitted in London by 2032. A total of 80 charging points will be dedicated to black cabs, with plans to implement 150 by the end of 2018 and 300 by 2020.

Oslo, Norway: The city plans to have its fleet of 1,200 public vehicles using electricity by 2020, has introduced restrictions on cars entering the city centre and granted access to priority lanes for shared EVs only. A project in Vulkan on the city’s outskirts demonstrates a public-private cooperation model between the city, a utility company and a real-estate firm for smart charging stations.

Paris, France: The region of Ile-de-France and private partners developed Autolib, an electric car sharing service with 4,000 EVs and 1,100 charging stations with more than 6,200 charging points across the region, accessible to service users and other EV owners.

San Francisco, USA: The Department of Motor Vehicles provides licences to test driverless cars on public roads in the Silicon Valley as part of an experimental programme.

Recommendations for action
The report gathers and analyses practical examples and best practices, which can be tailored to local specificities. The principles – required for action by both public and private sectors – and their corresponding recommendations are described below.

Take a multistakeholder and market-specific approach: A comprehensive approach to electrification of transport will require engagement of stakeholders from different industries and sectors and may vary significantly across different markets based on the local energy mix or mobility patterns.

Prioritize high-use vehicles: The shift of the approach to transport electrification, through advancing and reforming regulation, should prioritize high-use vehicles, such as fleet and autonomous vehicles. The goal is to accelerate the electrification of miles to maximize the value creation.

Deploy critical charging infrastructure today while anticipating mobility transformation: In the context of mobility and energy systems transformation, planning charging infrastructures is critical to cope with the risk of stranded assets as well as ensure the sustainable implementation and use of the charging stations and hubs.

“The convergence of mobility and energy strategies can magnify the economic and social benefits of electric mobility in cities, and ensure increased sustainability, reliability and customer choice”, explains Roberto Bocca, Head of Energy and Basic Industries, Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum.

“Autonomous vehicles and grid edge technologies are around the corner, and cities, in particular the smartest ones, will deploy them at rapid pace. The mobility and energy players should start building strategies and business models now to embrace these changes and leverage them for sustainable and profitable growth”, added Joseph Scalise, who leads the Americas Utilities and Alternative Energy Sector at Bain & Company.

Energy storage can help grids use more wind and solar power, but it does not always reduce carbon emissions, write Naga Srujana Goteti, Eric Hittinger and Eric Williams of the University of Rochester. In some cases, adding storage actually even increases carbon emissions. This happens when consumption is shifted to periods when coal power is used more. Article courtesy The Conversation.

Carbon-free energy: Is the answer blowing in the wind? Perhaps, but the wind doesn’t always blow, nor does the sun always shine. The energy generated by wind and solar power is intermittent, meaning that the generated electricity goes up and down according to the weather.

But the output from the electricity grid must be controllable to match the second-by-second changing demand from consumers. So the intermittency of wind and solar power is an operational challenge for the electricity system.

Energy storage is a widely acknowledged solution to the problem of intermittent renewables. The idea is that storage charges up when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining, then discharges later when the energy is needed. Storage for the grid can be a chemical battery like those we use in electronic devices, but it can also take the form of pumping water up a hill to a reservoir and generating electricity when letting it flow back down, or storing and discharging compressed air in an underground cavern.

Motivated by a view that storage is a “green” technology, governments are increasingly promoting utility-scale and distributed energy storage. For example, in November 2017, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill mandating targets for storage adoption by 2030. Other states with similar policies are Oregon, Massachusetts, California and Maryland. Companies like Tesla also have been branding storage systems as clean technologies.

But do large storage systems lower emissions in our current grids? In a recent study, we found this isn’t necessarily the case – a reflection of how complex the electricity system can be.

The role of coal

Because storage can enable renewables to meet changing demand, we often assume the technology is inherently green – that is, by adding storage and renewables to the grid, we reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It’s similar to noticing that computers can provide education and productivity benefits, and then assuming that everything a person does on a computer is educational or productive. For both energy storage and computers, it depends on how you use it.

In the Midwest, we found that adding a storage capacity of 3 gigawatts, enough power to supply roughly 500,000 U.S. homes, raises carbon emissions an equivalent of adding 6,700 cars per year to the road.

In our analysis, we found that adding storage can, for some grids, increase carbon emissions. While counterintuitive at first glance, this result makes sense when one considers how electricity grids are operated. Broadly speaking, the entire U.S. grid is operated as a set of regional sub-grids that cover the U.S. like a patchwork quilt.

Energy storage has no smokestack emissions like coal or natural gas power plants. But new storage affects the operation of other power plants on the grid, resulting in an increase or a decrease in carbon emissions depending on the type of power plants supplying electricity for that region.

In most cases, storage systems in the U.S. operate to maximize profit. To do this, storage “buys low and sells high.” Electricity is typically cheap at night when demand is low, and more expensive in the daytime, especially when people are getting home from work and turning on a bunch of appliances. So storage system operators tend to buy at night and sell during the day. The net effect of storage on emissions thus depends on what kind of generators are used to meet new demand at night versus the day.

In grids with a lot of coal power – Midwestern, Western and Southern states rely heavily on coal – the coal plants are typically used to meet small changes in demand at night. Natural gas plants tend to work during the day to meet peak demand. In these electricity grids, storage tends to charge up with coal power at night, displacing natural gas power during the day.

Coal power is a dirtier source of electricity than natural gas, with about twice the carbon emissions for every unit of electricity produced. Therefore, in places where new storage means more coal and less natural gas generation, storage will increase total carbon emissions from the grid.

In the Midwest, we found that adding a storage capacity of 3 gigawatts, enough power to supply roughly 500,000 U.S. homes, raises carbon emissions an equivalent of adding 6,700 cars per year to the road. And as more storage is added, the carbon emissions increase.

While a national carbon tax does not look likely in the near future, there are others paths to ensuring green outcomes from storage

On the other hand, we found that in New York, a state with very little coal power, adding storage reduces carbon emissions. The Midwest is currently the dirtiest electricity grid in the U.S., and New York is one of the cleanest, so other regions would fall somewhere in between.

Not always easy being green

So, how can grid planners achieve the promise of a happy marriage between storage and renewables, assuming that they have to live in the same house with crusty old Uncle Coal?

One possibility is that, even with storage operating to maximize profit, adding enough wind and solar to the grid could counteract the effect of coal. With enough excess renewable energy, storage in any form – batteries or water reservoirs, for example – would preferentially use solar and wind because they are the cheapest sources when the supply of power exceeds the demand. Storage would still be shifting coal power from night to day, but enabling renewables more would be enough to make up for the extra emissions.

Storage will always help us to use more of our low-cost electricity sources. The question is whether that is coal, nuclear or renewables

We studied this and found that for the Midwest grid there is a turning point when wind and solar reach about 18 percent of total generating capacity: At that point, adding storage starts to decrease rather than increase emissions. The current adoption level is 10 percent, so it would take some time before storage in the Midwest reduces emissions.

Another option is to change how storage is operated. With a modest price on carbon, for example, the cost of different generators would shift so that storage charges less often from coal plants, reducing emissions even in the coal-heavy Midwest grid.

While a national carbon tax does not look likely in the near future, there are others paths to ensuring green outcomes from storage. For example, states can put in place policies that encourage more use of zero-carbon resources instead of coal.

Regardless, storage will always help us to use more of our low-cost electricity sources. The question is whether that is coal, nuclear or renewables.

Affordable electric vehicles that can drive up to 600 kilometres on a single charge will help bring a motoring revolution to Australia, predicts Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, in an intervention that defies naysayers of the technology.

In an interview with Fairfax Media, Dr Finkel said the onus was on the federal government to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector, but predicted electric cars “will be a significant element” of policies considered.

Dr Finkel – who owns two electric cars – would not comment on government policy. But he pointed to his review of the national electricity market that called for the development of a whole-of-economy emissions reduction strategy by 2020.

Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg last month declared electric vehicles would revolutionise Australia, saying the scale of disruption would rival the introduction of the iPhone.

The comments prompted fierce debate about the extent to which the government should encourage the electric vehicle industry. A handful of Coalition backbenchers led by climate sceptic Craig Kelly stridently oppose financial incentives, such as subsidies, to lower the purchase cost of the technology.

The transport sector is a major contributor to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. However electric vehicle uptake in this nation is minute compared with other nations such as those in Europe, where governments have played a far greater role in encouraging the technology.

Dr Finkel said Australia’s vast distances, and concern about electric vehicle driving range, may have held back sales.

However the next generation of cars, soon to reach Australia, were at entry-level prices and could drive up to 600 kilometres on a single charge, he said.

“That will make quite a difference to Australians’ interest in electric cars. It will get better and better in time because the improvements in batteries keep on coming,” he said.

France and Britain are encouraging electric car adoption by vowing to end the sale of new diesel and petrol cars by 2040. Norway and the Netherlands aim to do so by 2025, and China has indicated it will also adopt a ban.

Transport Minister Barnaby Joyce has ruled out similar moves in Australia.

Despite this, benefits flowing from the overseas bans would trickle down to Australia, Dr Finkel told Fairfax Media.

“There will be an extraordinarily deep shift away from petrol and diesel cars towards pure electric [vehicles],” he said of countries with a ban on conventional cars.

“Volume will go up, prices will go down, electric cars will therefore inevitably be better vehicles with longer range, lower prices and more accessible to Australians.”

Dr Finkel said aside from the clear environmental benefits, electric cars were a “more enjoyable driving experience”.

“You just touch the accelerator and the car responds, whereas in a petrol car there is a lag of two tenths of a second … There is something magical about the responsiveness of it,” he said.

Australia had the potential to develop next-generation lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars, but there was “no actual large-scale activity” to date, Dr Finkel said.

“Around the world what you’re seeing is companies getting into it partly because there is some support from government,” he said.

“We’ve got a workforce, we’ve got access to raw materials such as lithium … we’ve got experience in designing, building and exporting products, but we haven’t made that kind of commitment.”

In the race to replace the internal combustion engine that propels most of the world’s cars, trucks and buses with vehicles powered by electricity, one country stands out, and it might not be one that immediately comes to mind.

It’s not China, even though the sheer number of new plug-in electric vehicles sold there in 2017, 605,500, was the highest in the world, accounting for 2.6 percent of all vehicles purchased in the country. It’s certainly not the United States, where EV sales checked in last year at just 1.1 percent. The undisputed leader is Norway, where fully 35 percent of new vehicles sold in 2017 — and 52 percent of those sold in December alone — were EVs.

Looking at Norway’s figures, one might believe that EVs are on a fast track to upend the century-long reign of fossil fuels as the dominant vehicular power source. That may very well be the case in Norway, where almost all electricity is generated from hydropower, EVs are exempted from most taxes, and their owners enjoy a range of benefits that can be worth thousands of dollars a year, including free recharging and use of toll roads along with free or subsidized parking. But what about the rest of the world? Experts’ predictions are truly all over the map.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, for example, forecasts that “adoption of emission-free vehicles will happen more quickly than previously estimated because the cost of building cars is falling so fast.” Electric cars, Bloomberg predicts, will outsell fossil-fuel-powered vehicles within two decades, turning the global auto industry upside down and creating economic turmoil for oil-exporting countries.

That’s a conservative forecast compared to the predictions of Tony Seba, author of the 2014 book Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation, who argues that much larger forces are in play than just the cost of the vehicles. He says that the combination of digital and electricity-generating technologies will put an end to the conventional atom-based energy and transportation industries. His forecast: By 2030 all new mass-market vehicles will be electric and all new energy will be provided by solar or wind.

More than most in the EV forecasting game, both Bloomberg and Seba focus on near-horizon advances in technology as the major factor affecting adoption rates. But there are many other forces at work. A 2015 reportprepared for the University of Hawaii provides a range of EV adoption-rate forecasts for that state — between 6 percent and 15 percent by 2040 — based on numerous internal and external factors. Internal factors, as described in the report, are those under the control of vehicle manufacturers and include characteristics of the EV itself: not only purchase price but also battery costs, driving range and charging time. External factors include fuel prices, consumer characteristics, availability of charging stations, travel distance, public visibility, vehicle diversity and governmental policy incentives.

EV support policies, regulations and incentives linked to California’s decades-long campaign to improve its air quality are clearly the major factors underlying its leading position among the states for EV sales – 5 percent last year. Despite these efforts, however, the state still has the nation’s worst health impacts from air pollution. Ramping up the state’s air-quality campaign, last month Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order setting a new target of five million zero-emission vehicles by 2030. He proposed an eight-year, $2.5 billion initiative to help bring 250,000 electric-vehicle charging stations and 200 fueling stations for hydrogen-powered vehicles to the state by 2025.

California already is home to about half of all EVs that have been sold in the U.S. Its continuing and intensifying efforts to build a strong EV market should serve as a model for other states and regions — and perhaps even countries — that want to improve their air quality and reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions.

But whether California could ever come close to matching Norway’s amazing EV sales numbers is anybody’s guess. Perhaps Norway’s success will turn out to be an exception, fueled by a unique set of circumstances in a small economically advantaged country. Or maybe, as the leading early adopter of EVs, it will provide the roadmap for the rest of the world. One thing is for sure: Anyone interested in the future of EVs will want to keep an eye on a small Scandinavian country where these vehicles seem poised to rule the roads.