 Hello and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our briefing today about building out electric vehicle charging infrastructure. I'm Dan Brasette, the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics for policymakers. More recently, we've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs to help make energy efficiency, beneficial electrification, and renewable energy more accessible and affordable for their customers. ESI provides informative, objective, non-partisan coverage of climate change topics in briefings, written materials, and on social media. All of our educational resources, and that includes briefing recordings, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and podcasts, are always available for free online at www.esi.org. If you would like to make sure you always receive our latest educational resources, the best way to do it is to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Today is part three of our briefing series, Scaling up innovation to drive down emissions. We have already covered green hydrogen on April 27th and direct air capture just last week. Our final briefing in the series will be Offshore Wind Energy, which will happen later this month. To review presentation materials and summary notes and RSVP for what comes next, check out our resources at www.esi.org. Our companion briefing series, Living with Climate Change, is also currently underway. So far, we have learned about the climate adaptation and resilience challenges posed by the polar vortex and sea level rise. Our next briefing in the series will be about wildfires on June 13th, and that will be followed by extreme heat later this month. Again, you can sign up for the whole set by visiting us at www.esi.org forward slash briefings. Unlike green hydrogen and direct air capture, electric vehicle supply equipment, which is the formal name for EV chargers, is relatively commonplace. In fact, I would bet everyone watching the live cast today has at least seen a level two charger in a parking lot or garage at the mall, near an office building, or maybe at an airport. And I would also bet the same cannot be said about facilities and equipment necessary to produce low or no carbon hydrogen or remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But relatively commonplace does not mean we have enough of these things. Think about how many gasoline pumps and service stations you've used or seen in last year is a number probably too high to count with any confidence. And even without the specifics, it is certainly way, way more than the number of electric vehicle charging stations we've come across. Electric vehicles are the future, at least for those of us who rely on cars and trucks and SUVs to get around on a daily basis. Internal combustion engines that run on fossil fuels still outnumber their electric counterparts for now. According to the 2022 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, electric vehicle sales doubled from about 326,000 in 2020 to about 657,000 vehicles in 2021. And more and more automakers are in the game, which gives consumers more and more models and configurations to choose from than ever before. Nobody I have ever talked to predicts that the upward trend of EV sales will slow down from this point forward. And that brings us to our briefing today. Electric vehicle adoption is a critical element of decarbonizing the transportation sector, which accounts for about 29% of total US greenhouse gas emissions. And a significant barrier to greater and faster adoption of EVs is the insufficient state of the charging infrastructure necessary to support tens of millions of electric vehicles. So what are we going to do about this? This need is widely understood in the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act enacted last year provides $7.5 billion to put 500,000 public charging stations in service. And that is above and beyond what other federal programs like the US Department of Agriculture's Rural Energy Savings Program are already supporting, not to mention all the private investment. In addition to the deployment challenges of reimagining our vehicle refueling network to support all the new EVs on the road, I am especially interested in how utility regulation, policies like building energy codes and our own behavior will evolve. Our panelists will help us understand these dynamics and other considerations as well. Before we turn to our panel, let me remind everyone that we will have some time at the end of our session for questions, and we will do our best to incorporate questions from our audience. If you have a question, there are two ways you can send it to us. First, you can send us an email, and the email address to use is ask at EESI.org, that's ASK at EESI.org. Or even better, then follow us on Twitter at EESI online and send it to us that way by retweeting or responding to the live tweeting thread. And bonus points if you use the hashtag EESI talk. Our first panelist is Catherine Stankin. Catherine is the Vice President of Policy at the Electrification Coalition. She leads and manages the policy team at the EC, which is focused on electrifying the transportation sector. Her work spans across city, state, regional, and federal levels. Catherine, welcome to the briefing today. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. Great. Thanks so much for having me, Dan. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. It is still morning here on the West Coast. So I'm in Arizona. So I think you can all see my slides now. And here we go. Great. So again, thanks for inviting me here to talk today. And one of the most exciting things that we could be talking about in today is EV charging infrastructure and EVs just because of the impact it has on all of our lives. So my name is Catherine Stankin. I'm the Vice President of Policy, as Dan said, at the Electrification Coalition, which is a non-profit, bipartisan organization that's working to accelerate adoption of EVs in order to reduce the economic and national security threats caused by our dependence on oil. And our sister organization is safe. They were formerly known as Securing America's Future Energy, but now they go by safe. And they lead a broader approach that's focused on the supply side and the critical minerals needed for the batteries, but it's the same core mission of getting to mass adoption of EVs. So we have direct experience working at the local, state, and federal levels. And that includes acting as the lead implementer for transportation for the US DOT's Smart City Challenge, working with 25 leadership cities through the American City's Climate Challenge, working with companies like Pepsi to provide technical support, to accelerate freight electrification, and working directly with states around the country to provide technical and policy support. And in terms of our state work, that's the center square there, our state EV policy accelerator, you can see the states that we are mostly focused on. Also Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana. So I am going to give a lay of the land across the federal level, state, and city level, and the utility landscape about where we are. And Dan already provided some of those numbers, but hopefully we'll put it all in context and you'll get the big picture of all that is going on in this space. And then at the end, I'm going to talk about what's on the horizon and what I'm looking forward to. So with the federal level, obviously, you're probably all aware of the bipartisan infrastructure law. And on the left there, there's certain dedicated funding streams for EV charging infrastructure. So the 5 billion that's going to be building out EV infrastructure along the highways, that's the NEVI funding, as we like to call it, the National EV infrastructure program. Then there's the 2.5 billion in competitive grants available, which with those a 50% set aside for community specific grants with a priority for rural and underserved communities. And then there's also 2.5 billion available for electric school buses. And also another 2.5 billion set aside for zero emission and low emission buses. Now that's not just the buses, the EPA did make a clarification that the charging infrastructure for those buses is also permitted. So with the NEVI funding though, I mean, states are currently hard at work in developing their plans. Those are due August 1st and they'll be approved on a rolling basis by the DOT and the DOE and hopefully all approved by mid September. And this is really exciting work because it's bringing together a lot of different players in the states that haven't all necessarily worked together before. So example, you know, the state transportation offices, the energy offices, the air offices, and now also the utility commissions and the utility boards. Just a note too about the electric school bus program there, that funding opened up May 22nd, I believe. The first round of funding is 500 million that's available. And the EPA is going to prioritize applications in high need local education agencies, tribal schools and rural areas. All the additional programs there from the bipartisan infrastructure law, those are listed on the right. And some of those were already existing programs but they had an increase in funding attributed to them or there was a clarification within the legislative language that now allows for EV charging infrastructure to be eligible. But that is not dedicated EV funding there. But now that we do have all these programs, we need to get the word out about them. And so that'll bring me to my next slide there, which is about agency coordination. So let me find okay. So lots of agency coordination happening right now. Obviously, there's the new joint office that was formed between the DOE and the DOT. And what's really great about this is that they're offering technical assistance to states. So nobody, no state should feel like they don't know what to do or who to reach out to it. I think it's very clear and the DOT and DOE has done a great job with that. There's also been a lot of material provided in terms of where EV charging infrastructure is applicable. Not only under the bipartisan infrastructure law on the current on the last slide I showed that right hand column with all the different programs but the White House back in April last year provided some clarity working with the DOT about where EV charging infrastructure is eligible. And so on the right you can see that's just a screenshot there of where you can see a little charging icon under which programs it's eligible. But the DOT also have released their rural EV toolkit and that second picture there's a screenshot of the cover. And on pages 73 to 83 there are dozens of programs where EV charging infrastructure can be eligible. I will say though that those are not again not EV specific programs and so and many of them are oversubscribed every year because they're so popular. So that will just highlight the need that we need additional funding at the federal level to support the deployment of EV infrastructure. Now the EPA they also have their Queen's School Bus website up and running and they also are providing technical assistance to school districts. And then with the NEVI deployment principles there. So as we're working with the states these are some of the ways that we're helping states to think through what their plan should look like and the DOT there's specific guidance about what that state plan needs to entail and there's a very specific template and all but states are also not just thinking about this funding as a one-time opportunity. They're thinking about how can this already how can it dovetail with some of their existing programs or with their own state deployment goals. So we're encouraging states to have this be a seamless EV charging experience across the board for light duty drivers and medium heavy duty drivers. And so when we mean 100% we mean that we want to see all states be taking advantage of this funding at the federal level. We did not see that happen necessarily for some of the Volkswagen settlement funding that was available for deploying EV charging infrastructure. So that's a big priority for us to make sure that all states are taking advantage of this. Reliable I think that is self-explanatory the same effective equitable with high quality. We would like to see these programs at the federal level be creating high quality jobs and a strong American supply chain. And what I mean by connected is also that as I mentioned that the the states are the agencies are now working across the board with one another transportation office, air office, energy office. But with the utility board or the utility commission in that state, what are the additional policies and programs that need to be adopted there? Does the utility commission need to be making a statement about EV rates, rate design, managed charging programs, encouraging their investor on utilities to be putting forward programs along those lines, that kind of thing. What I mean by affordable there too is that each state has identified a pathway for meeting that 20% cost share requirement for the nevy funding and a pathway for leveraging further public-private partnerships and private investment. So you may have already known that about the federal level, but now about the state and the city level landscape, there is so much that has been going on over the years. And what the federal funding does is really help to just now layer on top of what's been brewing at the state level, I should say, and what we're excited to see even more activity and investment in and through. So with corridor programs, what I mean by this is something like the Nevada Electric Highway, the Rev West Agreement, the Northeast Corridor Regional Strategy, which goes from Maine to DC. And some of that did, as states made those agreements, some of them the states did commit funding towards building out EV infrastructure along those specific corridors. Others did not, it was just the agreement, but that does then show the state intent to further support the development of EV infrastructure and signals the state's recognition that EVs are the future. With rebate programs, these have been funded at the state level. Originally, most of them started with funding all alt fuel infrastructure, and now most of them are focused on just electric vehicles, infrastructure alone. There's a screenshot there of our Achieve Model Policy Toolkit, which would go into a lot of detail about those rebate programs, which state has them, what's the funding level, what it looks like, the details, et cetera, who's eligible. So I'll just point you to that Achieve Model Policy Toolkit, and we do have an update of that coming out later on this summer. Deployment goals, states obviously have, they'd like to see 500,000 chargers on the road, or deployed by ex-state, that kind of thing. With the Volkswagen settlement funds, now just to put some numbers towards this amount of the funding. So if you all recall, there was two parts to this in terms of the EV charging infrastructure. There was the appendix C and the appendix D. So appendix C was the entity that formed Electrify America, which would be requiring Volkswagen to then commit $2 billion over 10 years. That was not just all for electric charging infrastructure, though probably a good chunk of that was, but that was $2 billion. And as Dan had mentioned, and I showed $7.5 billion is what we now have at the federal level. So significantly more and really helping us to launch us into this electric transportation future. The other piece of the Volkswagen settlement funding, that is the appendix D. And that's what I mentioned that not all of the states took advantage of this in terms of how much they could put towards EV infrastructure. There's a certain piece of that was going to allow them to put 15% of that funding towards it, and not all states unfortunately did. In terms of the EV ready wiring codes and ordinances, this is more at the city level, but we're seeing a lot of new best practices be developed here on how to be ready for all this funding and investment coming and not having to rip up parking lots and do a lot of retrofits, which is going to save states and cities a lot of money. Right of way charging programs, we're also seeing a lot of best practices start to emerge here. There's been a number of pilot programs done just at cities, probably not so much statewide, but just more city level or local level. And for anyone that doesn't know what that is at right of way charging, that's allowing for infrastructure to be built kind of on the sidewalk. So sometimes there's that little strip of grass between where you might see a tree planted or something, it's putting a charging infrastructure there. And depending on how the city is or the local level is with jurisdiction, that could either be the city might have control over that or it might be the property owner. So there's definitely some policy needed there to clarify that. Multi-unit dwellings, I think that's probably self-explanatory. And then with clean fuel standards, this is something I just wanted to highlight because this is becoming more and more popular, I guess, or there's a lot of interest growing on this at the state level. And so this is in California at least, it is a market-based mechanism. So you can't exactly say how much a policy like this is worth in terms of the credit value and the pot of money, I guess. But let's just say the scale is at about hundreds of millions of dollars. Now these credits, in terms of the overall program, electricity is a clean fuel. So it's starting to receive more and more of that credit value. And then devils in the details, so to speak, about how that credit money would get spent. Is that going back to the driver of the vehicle? Is that going back to the utility? Is that going back to some kind of partnership with the state as well to build out EV infrastructure? So we're starting to see some unique creative policies and how the credits are shaped be developed at the state level. And Washington State is probably one to watch right now. And then there's a whole lot more. So I spent a lot of time federal and city level. Now I'll speed up to get through the rest of this. But utilities, they have been investing in EV infrastructure as well. This chart here just shows their investment between 2012 and kind of the start of all this in June of 2021. So that's about three billion that the utilities have been investing so far. You could see the on the left side, the approved column, what that equals in terms of DC fast charging stations and level two stations. Excuse me, we are now starting to see more utilities move away from just the pilot programs and to do big full scale programs. And that's usually along the lines of hundreds of millions of dollars there. So what is on the horizon? Well, there's the, first of all, I think it's just important to note that the federal level has the right scale and scope. And so that's why we are heavily focused on the federal level and look forward to working with all of you in the audience listening to this. But you could see a list of some of the things there. For us, a big priority is a long-term extension of the 30C alternative fuel refueling property tax credit. There's other additional policies that were already thought through on the house side under the Build Back Better program there. For example, the funding for electrifying the federal fleet for the GSA, but also the US Postal Service. And that included funding for the EV infrastructure deployment as well for that. There's certain programs under the appropriations process that's going on right now. We're looking forward to the guidance from the DOT and the DOE on standards for the charging stations. There's, we support allowing for EV charging infrastructure to be built out at rest stops. And this is something that would have to happen legislatively through Congress as well. And then I just listed a couple other things here, the EVs for All Act, EVs and Underserved Communities Act, allowing REAP funding to be used for installing EV infrastructure on American farms. And then the EPA's renewable fuel standard policy. Looking forward to seeing what the EPA might be recommending for allowing electricity to be, electricity to be a pathway there that would generate credits. So that was a lot. But I'm going to pass it now to back to Dan. It was a lot, but it was expertly presented. So Catherine, thank you very much for your great presentation. And a great reminder to me to remind my audience, or our audience, that all of Catherine's presentation materials, and this goes for the other panelists as well, they're all available online at www.EESI.org. So Catherine's slides were quite good. If you'd like to go back and revisit them, it's very easy to do. And of course, you can also watch the archived webcast. Our second panelist today is Joe Inglisa. Joe is the vice president of business development at Semiconect. Semiconect is a leading provider of electric vehicle amenities to the North American commercial and residential property market. He joined Semiconect in 2011, just as they started commercial sales. And when he's not working, he loves the great outdoors and volunteering in his community. Joe, great to see you. I'll turn it over to you. Okay. Thank you very much, Dan. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this panel and this group. And thank you to the EESI team for all the work that they're doing. So that's that. My name's Joe Inglisa. I am with Semiconect. Our world headquarters is in Bowie, Maryland. That puts us in between Washington, D.C. and the beautiful Chesapeake Bay have been with the company a little more than 10 years. So I think what I'm going to try to do is just, you know, kind of give your give an educational perspective from a manufacturer. And I'll talk a little bit about, you know, who we are on the next slide. So again, we are the manufacturer and the software developer. So what that means is we build the chargers, we operate the network for the buyers. So that means they own the chargers. It's up to them to make them, because they own the charger and they do the installation through their own prefer electrical contractor. It means that they could either make them public or they could make them private. They could either make them complimentary or they could charge a fee for the revenue. So when you see our chargers deployed out there and you may see an expensive rate, that's not Semiconect charging you the driver. It's actually the owner. So that's what we do. Our core focus in the beginning was what I'm going to refer to as L2 or level two. And what that means is 208 or 240 volt chargers. And so it's a very common electrical infrastructure very available. So our focus in terms of customers were commercial real estate, even just workplace charging employers wanting to put them in for their employees to help encourage them to buy electric vehicles. And then the other half of commercial real estate is what's called commercial multifamily. And that's apartments and condos. But that said, I'm proud to say we're in every market. There's out there from the federal government to state and municipal governments to colleges, universities, hospitals. So again, very excited to be here and share some background from us. Next slide, please. All right. So again, I wanted to keep it educational. So people refer to the chargers normally in three different ways. Level one, L1, level two, L2, and sometimes level three, but really what's called DC fast charging. The level one and level two is AC charging. The DC fast charging is DC. So level one, we're not seeing that many manufacturers making a level one charger because it really turns out to be just a trickle charge where you can buy an affordable level two charger and our standard is now 48 amps. We also have 80 amps for level two. And that's going to give that car about a driving range of somewhere around 45 miles. I say somewhere because there's many variables, one of which is how long the electrical run is, the longer the run, the more degradation. So that said, those are approximate numbers, but level two is relative to DC fast charging. We'll get in it later. Just very affordable to purchase, very affordable to install. And then there's DC fast charging and that's that very, very fast, that very high powered charge. It's 480 volts. And depending on the charger, the kilowatt charger, there's many different ranges from 50 to 350 kilowatt chargers out there. So depending on that charger, the charge time could be anywhere from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. And it depends on the charger and the kilowatt rating, but it also depends on the car and what the car can accept. Next slide, please. So the cars are starting to take off, but ironically, and the prices were coming down, you know, when the price of the battery capacity gets to about $100 per kilowatt hour, that's, you know, when we're going to see a break even with today's combustion engines. And frankly, I think we're there. And just one example, it's very late, you know, breaking news. GM's Bolt, Chevy Bolt, the base model is going to come out somewhere around $28,000, somewhere in that area. I didn't realize this, thankfully, because I hadn't had to buy a car recently, but the average new car today is $47,000. And again, the combustion engines clearly dominate that number because of the small and growing percentage of electric vehicles. So if the Chevy Bolt's coming out around $28,000 and the average car is $47,000, it's starting to get very attractive. There was an article about Ford also talking about how soon a $25,000 vehicle is going to be available. Tesla has been talking about it as well. With the recent supply chain issues, I think it's still going to be a few years off where we're at that $25,000 price point. But with the announcement of the Chevy Bolt at that price range, I think the attraction of the electric vehicles are going to become even more. Not to mention the ongoing increase price of gasoline. And the more people drive and own electric vehicles, the more they're going to talk about the instant torque, the performance of these vehicles, how cheap they are to maintain, and how cheap, frankly, the price of electricity is. Just to put things in perspective, the price for electricity relative to gas is about one-fifth the price of electricity. So again, the more people realize the overall life cycle costs of an electric vehicle, I think the adoption is going to shoot through the roof. Next slide, please. So where are we going to charge? I don't even like the word range anxiety. The word alone scares me. But the fact of the matter is I've been driving an electric vehicle for about eight or nine years. I cheat a little bit because I drive the Chevy Volt with a V, and that gives you the best of both worlds. I get about 60 miles of electricity for all my local driving, and if I have to go anywhere far, I get 400 miles in gasoline. But that said, many times I do stay on electricity, even with that small range. And that's the point of this whole slide that, you know, look at the base of this triangle here. The biggest base is at home. Most people who own an electric vehicle, I say most. I realize some condos, maybe some lower socioeconomic apartments, you know, may not be putting in the chargers, and they can't. But the majority of the owners who do have the electric cars are doing their charging at home. And just, you know, think about yourself, your typical trip. I think I have it in another slide. But I think on average, we all drive less than 100 miles a day. Many of these new electric cars coming out today easily have a range of over 200 miles. So, you know, the road trip is another category in itself. But you have to think about what is your driving habits 90% of the time, or maybe even 52 weeks out of the year. But anyway, so that said, most of your charging is at home. And again, that's why multi-family is one of our targets. One of the next largest categories, you know, really is your workplace charging, your stores, your restaurants, retail. And that's why workplace charging. You know, last I checked, when I go to work, you know, most of us work at least four to eight hours and our cars normally sit still. So, you know, what does that mean? Your workplace charging. If you don't have a charger at home, your workplace charging is an outstanding place to charge. Again, putting things in perspective, putting things in perspective on how long your commute is, most drivers could leave their work fully topped off in probably in an hour or less. So, we make these chargers, they're designed to be shared. And then at stations along the road. And that's for your weekend trips and your vacations. Next slide, please. So, you know, this slide, I, you know, I really want to just talk about the type of chargers and, you know, what the fit is and where that charge is going to be. Again, I got ahead of myself. You know, most of the households 90% of the time are driving 100 miles or less. You know, unless you're doing a lot of delivery driving, you know, our car is only being used 10% of the day. Just want to get into just a few differences about L2 charging versus DC fast charging. The buyers just have to be very careful and understand, you know, what their requirements and what their needs are. But that said, L2 chargers are very easy to install. A lot of the infrastructure is already there versus DC fast chargers. Now, we do both. So, I don't have a bias. But I want to make it clear that, you know, the L2 charging can do a great percentage of the charging needs out there other than that highway, that rest stop type charging. Normally there's not a grid upgrade required for the L2 charging. There's even no routine maintenance for a level two charger. The DC fast chargers has some, you know, filters, some air filters that do need to be replaced. You know, our chargers, think about a light pole. It's just a pass through of electricity. There is no calibrating it. There's no adjustments. It's just an occasional wipe down with a mild detergent. So, again, with an L2 charger, no routine maintenance. You know, in terms of the cost, the L2 chargers are about one tenth the price of a DC fast charger. The insulation costs for DC fast chargers immense. So, you really, the buyers really have to understand their needs. And I'm just going to jump into that with these last two items. So, a school bus, for example, with the rating, with the battery capacity of 220 kilowatt hours with an 80 amp L2 charger, it can be charged in under 12 hours. So, assuming it's working 12 hours, and I don't think it is, I think it's less, maybe like an eight hour timeframe. Anyway, there's ample time for overnight charging. And so, the level two charger can be a good option there. And that allows all of our grant money, our federal money to go further if the buyers understand the requirements and makes the correct and most efficient purchase. Another example is a, which is going to be popular for transit, for deliveries for fleet is the Ford E transit. That 68 kilowatt hour Ford E transit could be totally charged in four hours or less. So, again, for that, you know, depending on the shifts and how long those vehicles are being charged, you really want to understand what your kilowatt capacity is and what, you know, an L2 charger could do for you. Next slide. So, industry game changers, policies, issues, support EV charging and building codes for new construction. I think that one's huge and where I'm going with this is many new properties, many municipalities regulation is saying, you know, you need to put in X amount of EV chargers up front and X percentage make ready. I've seen somewhere around like 5% is a common number for EV ready and up to 25% for make ready. Make ready is the amount of infrastructure in place that all you have to do is now. I think that's a great one because doing a retrofit is then that much more expensive. Federal and state incentives. I'll say many years the Catherine mentioned it, the alternative fueling infrastructure tax credit. I think that's a great one. Many times the electrical infrastructure cost to do the installation is more expensive than the chargers themselves. And I know many commercial customers would be constantly asking about that tax credit and, you know, really almost became reliant on that. But that said, there's some good ones. And then the state programs, you know, being in the Mid-Atlantic, I'm referencing Maryland, they've had a very good solid rebate program 40% based on total costs, very simple program. The and I've seen many that are the overview alone is like over 20 pages. Now I'm seeing them around eight to four pages. Very easy to understand. There's really not a lot there and some some great state programs out there. And I think there's going to go a long way. And as Catherine talked about the equitable access, you know, going to be very important going forward. Next slide. And that's it. I hope I stayed on time and looking forward to talking to everybody a little later. Thanks again. Thanks, Joe. And regular viewers of EESI webcasts know that I love nothing more than building energy codes. So I appreciate that shout out. It's a really, really important thing. And it's crazy that we're building new construction that is not EV ready. Our third, actually, before I introduce our third panelists, let me two reminders. One, slides, presentation materials, archive webcast. If you'd like to go back and revisit anything, it's all available online at www.esi.org. Also, we're covering a lot of really interesting topics. And I expect that people in our audience today have questions. And if you do have questions, you have two options to ask them. One is to send us an email, ask at esi.org, that's ASK at esi.org. Or if you would like to, you can also follow us on Twitter at EESI online and ask us a question that way. We would appreciate the follow, of course, but also even more so appreciate the question to help advance the discussion today. Our third speaker is Yvette Ellis. Yvette is the chief workforce officer and co-founder of Charger Help. Charger helps app-based dispatch and deployment system solves the industry-wide problem of broken electric vehicle charging stations by providing on-demand repairs and maintenance support from trained local workforces. With over 15 years of experience as an impactful and pop-provoking workforce developer, Yvette is championed in businesses and empowering decision makers to develop opportunities to create equitable and prolonged change through the lens of workforce development. Yvette, it's a pleasure to see you today. I'm looking forward to your presentation. Thanks so much. Good morning. Thank you so much, Stan, for that introduction. Hope everybody out there is doing well. Excuse me, I'm so sorry. Okay, let's get going. Who is Charger Help, Dan? So briefly, here we are, Technology Solutions for EV Charging Maintenance and Workforce Enablement to set the standard, what we want to do is set the standard for servicing for EV charging infrastructure using technology-powered solutions. We serve as Level 2 DC FC for passenger-flight medium and heavy duty vehicles. So that's who we are in a snapshot. Next slide, please. Okay, here's a little snapshot of our team, some of our techs from last year, but just want to introduce you to my co-founder Camille, our Chief Revenue Officer, Jamie, and our head of product, Walter, and with the entire team, we have government relations, and we have a tech team in 11 states, our actual EVSE technicians who go out, boots on the ground, and fix the broken EV charging stations. Next slide. All right, I thought we would level set, so give us some street credibility. These are some of our customers, so we're really, really, really closely working with manufacturers, network providers, utilities to make sure that not only the legacy machines that are in the ground now, but also this new coming, the new coming assets that are being put in the ground now, that they are up and working as well. Next slide, please. So today, we're going to get into a little bit of two things. We're going to get into, I set my timer and still didn't push it. We're going to get into two things. We're going to get into a little bit of reliability and how it relates directly to the workforce development part of our industry. So right now, where we are, you have $500 billion plus dollars being invested into EVSE that rely on the current EV charging infrastructure. And some of these pictures here are some real pictures that our technicians have shared with us. You know, the one at the bottom here, there's a wasp nest. You see a connector cut, and then you see here the out of order sign. These are all live and the public are directed to these charging stations. And as you can see, they're down. And this problem actually is a bigger problem than I think we are taking seriously. As we built this infrastructure, there'll be things in place for 97% uptime. There'll be things in place to ensure that the incoming charging stations have operations and maintenance, which is that's what Charter Hub is. We do operations and maintenance. We do not install. But it's very important that we get a snapshot of where the current infrastructure is right now. All right. Next slide. Okay. So a few things, excuse me, about Charter Hub that we do. We ensure charging station reliability and technology-enabled inclusive green economy workforce. So that's where I come in as Chief Workforce Officer. And as you can see here, some of these things are what our technicians do. We do do technician training. We do service deployment, parts and logistics management, reliability management. We optimize. And the EVSE diagnostics is a really, really big deal that we understand not only to put the machines in the ground, but to keep them up and working will take yes, technology, but also field service. Also, we have to have people that can go solve the problem immediately. I love the idea of when you think of Google Maps and where Google Maps was maybe 10, 12 years ago. If you remember people driving around, taking pictures, and then when you put in an address and see this picture, and now where Google Maps is now, you can pretty much get a street view and turn the camera around and see the whole nine. So really, that's to me where we are in this industry. We have to actually touch the machines, go fix them. We have to figure out analytically what is the problem, what's going down to make sure that the infrastructure stays up and running as we put new things down in the ground. New things, new charging stations down in the ground. Next slide, please. All right. So here's a little bit about how we use technology to enable our workforce. This is a snapshot of our platform. And as you can see, we work with charging station owners, network operators, OEMs, EV OEMs, utilities, and funding programs. And we have our own Chartered Health technicians. And we also are exploring what it looks like to have self-contracted technicians as well, because what you will see a lot of is a lot of crossover. You will see a lot of cross-training, up-training, not just the initial training. And one thing we talk about when we talk about workforce development is not adopting the idea that everything has to be a brand new workforce. A lot of these skillsets can be taught, can become transferable skills. And so as different folks in the ecosystem adopt the idea of cross-training, up-training will be able to not only create new jobs, but also extend jobs of those who are currently maybe not working in the green space. Next slide, please. All right. So we have the right workforce for the problem. So one thing that we did when we started Chartered Health, because of my career history with workforce development, working with Department of Labor, I knew that an old net code was really, really important. An old net code is the old net database. This is the database that Department of Labor uses to determine everything from the legitimacy of the job. What are you paid? What are the skillsets? What training? What are the duties that you're doing on a regular basis? So I knew it was really important with our effort to be equitable, diverse, to be inclusive. I knew it was really, really important that we worked with the Department of Labor to ensure that they had a close on what we were doing and they approved us for our old net code. So that's our old net code there. And while we're placed in an electrical and electronics repairs, what we do is we're not electricians, nor are we trying to be our techs are really, really good at knowing where to stop and escalate. But we are big on safety and I call us like the geek squad for EV charging. So we work directly with the manufacturers and the network providers to get the charging machine up and running again. So it was important that the Department of Labor was aware of what we were doing and they assigned us this code here that you see in front of you. Also information technology technicians with relevant safety certifications. So these are the type of folks that we're looking for. The safety certifications that we are just are just dealbreakers, non-starters. We require the NFPA 70E from the National Fire Association. We require OSHA trainings. We have high voltage training and we also have tiered techs at Charger Health. So everybody doesn't start off on the same level. And this is a way that as far as workforce development is concerned that you can really, really empower the workforce. Some folks will be brand new and some people can move up and it also creates pathways, growth mobility options. So when we use the tiered section, it allows people into the space to actually become a part of the union. A nice percentage of our technicians, our current technicians come from Gas and Oil, mainly because they are excellent when it comes to safety, right? They have a different year and a different brain when it comes to safety, which is what we want it. We have people from closing factories that worked on machinery. We also have technicians who are veterans. And then lastly, we have those that come in from telecommunications that install internet or cable before fiber optics that were very, very helpful as we started building Charger Health. We also are working with community colleges, those who may be automotive programs, electrical programs, IT programs. They are all very marketable and attractive to us as well. Next slide. Okay. So here we're going to talk about equitable jobs for all because I think we want equity, inclusion, diversity, and being more than a buzzword, I'm sure. But one way that we were able to do that was that we partnered with workforce development centers, agencies, programs. We partnered with community college to source, to recruit our applicants and to grow our training pipeline. We worked with them, A, because you will find a little bit more of everyone in those spaces. It's also a space where federal money is already being poured into, and they have whole departments up and running to be able to meet the need of employers. So it's a great place that this is what they're geared to do is working with the local workforce development programs in community colleges. We worked really hard to offer $30 an hour. I think money is a big deal when you're talking about, when you're talking about working with, when you're working with workforce development centers, programs, agencies, community colleges, sometimes we don't pay attention to what we start people off in. And because this will be a lucrative industry, we really did a lot of research about what is equitable pay for this position. We looked at other similar positions and we decided $30 an hour. So all of our techs start off at $30 an hour, which makes this a very competitive job. We were hiring for, I think, 20 technicians and we had over 1,600 applicants from all over the country. So people are really interested in being paid decently and being paid well. And then the last thing is our certified EVSE maintenance technician, of course nationally recognized with Department of Labor's O-Net Coal, but also we have worked with national certification programs like OSHA and NFPA to make sure that our technicians have equivalent safety training. We do safety training on a regular basis, weekly here at Charter and Health. We have a safety and compliance officer. And that leads me to the next slide, please. Okay. And the next slide would I want you to secure work. We train and hire. We do stackable certifications and then we utilize technology to keep our technicians up and running. But I wanted to run through that because the best thing that I want you all to take away from this is that when we talk about really exploring the workforce for this industry, they all won't be EVSE technicians, electric vehicle supply equipment technicians. We have seen a growth in sales project management. There's a number of other positions that will be closely and directly related to this industry growing. So I often encourage folks when you're thinking about the workforce, I say, are you a very plain lens? Any positions that you need in any other industry, you will also need in the EV industry as well. So it's not just the EVSE technician, but also logistics, management, operations, all of those positions now become very important to really get this off the ground and for math ED adoption to happen. Next slide, please. And I think I have a two minute warning. Great. Okay. Just wanted to get a little history on kind of how we do things. We were founded in 2020 and started off with two customers then in 2021, we moved to a utility and that area is growing as well. And then now into the future, we have introduced Charger Health as a Service, what we call a reliability as a service. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Okay. So yeah, reliability, I just wanted to make sure I got through all of them. Reliability as a service is pretty much a warranty that you can get coverage on your charging stations. And this not only does this, yes, protects your charging station, make sure you can get it fixed. But also this is another way that we can grow the workforce. When we commit to having our infrastructure online and ready to go and having trained professionals out that can keep it online and fixed, not only does it make our infrastructure work, but it also opens up jobs and more skills for people currently in jobs. So really excited to share with you all. Thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for having me. Thanks Yvette. It was our pleasure. Awesome presentation and congratulations on doing so well in such a short period of time. That's pretty impressive. Thank you. We're working hard. Thank you. Working hard. Our fourth panelist today is Laura Getz. Laura is the business development manager for the San Isabel Electric Association. And there she works with local and regional stakeholders to further equitable electrification and economic development in southern Colorado. Laura also serves on Colorado's low-income energy and water assistance legislative commission. And she formally served as the energy coordinator for Pueblo County. Laura, thanks so much for joining us today. I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about how things are going out in Colorado. Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me today. So I am excited to present everyone with the rural electric cooperative perspective on EV infrastructure build out. So of course I cannot speak for all rural co-ops, but I think that many of our experiences resonate nationwide. To give you a sense of our environment, our not-for-profit electric co-op is located in southern Colorado and we serve approximately 21,000 voting members. About 35% of our membership lives in a more urbanized environment while the other 65% are in rural areas as defined by the USDA. So the three primary counties that we serve are some of the poorest in Colorado and often represent the top three highest unemployment rates in the state month over month. The federal government has recently released maps highlighting disadvantaged and distressed communities across the nation and as you can see a fairly large swath of our territory is considered disadvantaged for this criteria. So to date there are a total of 11 charging stations across our service territory and we own about 60% of those. To date we've tested out about three different station brands and while we have put in a mix of level two and fast chargers, we see that private investment in our territory has been trending towards DC fast chargers. Future installations and opportunities for charging are likely to be associated with our state parks along our scenic highways and byways and in partnership with local government and in working with our rural transit agencies to electrify their fleets. We do have low adoption in our rural areas relative to our more urbanized populations so you'll see about 0.03% in our most disadvantaged communities versus 2% in our metro district. This also represents a significant opportunity for growth however. Something we've also been paying careful attention to is how we serve those passing through our region along significant interstate corridors like I-25 here and those state highways with higher traffic counts. To date all of our stations have been funded in part by state grants and some additional money from our generation and transmission provider Tristate. State funding has been very important to us and it covers about 50% of the total cost between purchase and installation of these units. We have on occasion also pursued community funding partnerships to make some of these more significant investments with DC fast chargers possible although there's a longer lead time kind of in gathering those partners and funding and working out the agreements between the partners. We have also developed a residential EV charging program for our membership with the understanding that up to 90% of EV charging is likely to take place at residences. Our program provides a free level 2 charger with proof of EV ownership and an agreement that the member will allow us to manage their charging to a certain extent by restricting their charging during our peak energy usage times. Our cooperative also received 5 million in 0% interest funding through the Rural Energy Savings Program or RESP and we use this federal money to offer low interest on bill financing for our members. The money helps cover the cost of installation and electrical upgrades that can often be associated with these residential installs. We also offer rebates on top of that to help mitigate the installation cost. So we have developed a robust energy services program called Empower and this serves as a one stop shop for the assessment installation and financing of things that our members might want like solar, water heating, insulation, and EV charging installations because like solar EV charging is considered a lot sexier than many of the other in-home opportunities to tackle energy efficiency. So we use it as a gateway tool to work with our members on a whole host of comprehensive energy related upgrades for their lives. We also partner with a trusted local solar provider to help sell and install these charging units. As this installer has the ground team and the electricians that are needed to get these things accomplished really at scale. Successful so far in less than two years, we've already booked more than $1 billion in on-bill energy related loans just in our membership alone. So some things for us to consider opportunities with regard to EV infrastructure, transportation electrification certainly brings opportunities like load growth which might be 18% or more for our cooperative and then importantly opportunities for load management so that we can see these as an asset versus a challenge at the end of the day and really opportunities to encourage charging at times that support our grid. There's also a unique chance to bring economic development into rural America as chargers located at small rural businesses encourage drivers to get off the highway and spend their money in our rural communities and finally member engagement for us is a critical part of our strategy map and the member engagement piece naturally results from managed charging as these programs require us to be in regular communication with our members and help them see themselves as partners in the optimization of our grid and just a few considerations as we work through charging infrastructure. One big thing in general is the affordability of locating infrastructure in pockets of the country with limited electrical capacity. Anytime we have to go in and upgrade a transformer or run a line longer distances it can come with really substantial costs. It often causes us to work backwards you know and and maybe we have partners interested in charging so we'll bring in a map and say okay you know where can we affordably build out infrastructure in locations and start circling spots on a map with our system engineer to really show where it financially makes sense to do so. For peak costs if charging ever happens to coincide with our monthly peak a single fast charging station could cost us between two and five thousand dollars in a month. So this is where managed charging will be critical and although our peak can often be a moving target real-time management of these stations could be a big future consideration. Payback is also difficult in rural America. Payback for all of our stations right now even in the more urbanized areas is still more than 20 years so that's why grants have been and will continue to be a very important consideration for us. And then coordination and communication is critical we don't necessarily want to be the ones who have to install all this infrastructure we're taking the lead because we know it needs to happen but if you know a local business or the state even wants to do so we think that's fantastic we just need to know that it's going to happen you know and if we encourage a business to move forward we also want to know what might be happening at the state level because more than one station in a specific pocket of the territory at this time could really hurt someone's return on investment so it's important to know well in advance what our map is going to look like. Equity is critically important in some pockets of our territory 10% of households don't even have access to a vehicle so we want to be mindful of how we allocate our cooperative funds when we're putting them into infrastructure so I've recently spent a lot of time working with our rural transit agencies on electrification plans for their fleet and what that fleet would need as they serve a large percentage of our disadvantaged populations and then finally maintenance and software subscriptions have increasingly become an important consideration subscription and maintenance plan costs to manage these stations track data charge fees and just generally keep them online can cost several thousand dollars a year sometimes per station and it's a growing budget line item for us. It also makes many of our small businesses hesitate to invest in infrastructure because of that consistent cost they will have to bear each year and it's a it's a big thing to consider when they're unlikely to see an ROI in the more immediate future so thank you again for the opportunity to present with you this afternoon don't hesitate to reach out at any point if you want to continue the conversation. Thank you Laura. Let us bring all of our panelists back online and we will commence with our questions and answers and really really looking forward to this discussion for really great presentations that helped sort of define what this looks like and where it's going and how it ought to be done properly so really looking forward to this. The first question I would like to ask is we have a big country and it's geographically diverse a lot of it's urban but an awful lot of it is not urban it's rural it's suburban and I'm considering for a federal policy audience that's thinking about federal policies and what can be done what the federal government can do what are some of the considerations that policymakers should consider to ensure that charging infrastructure is convenient and reliable for consumers in rural areas suburban areas and urban areas and are there things the federal government could be doing that maybe makes it easier for states and even regional organizations or for localities to do this and Catherine maybe we'll start with you we haven't heard from you for a while and then we'll go through the order I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts about how we should be how we should be thinking about these considerations yep absolutely and I live in a I consider it to be a rural it's 100 miles outside of Phoenix and so I think first of all it's important for just that recognition that the driving patterns are different between rural communities and urban ones and rural communities not everybody has a garage but you have more than likely more places where you can have access to a charging at home station whereas in more urban settings there's a lot more apartments other types of multi unit dwellings and so you might not have that access and so that's really important to consider in any type of federal planning or just city-state planning with the federal funding though I mean that 2.5 billion in the competitive grants that we're still waiting on the guidance for but that does then include specific set aside for communities and for rural communities so that's going to help to really establish getting some more rural communities on board and showing them that this technology works getting those best practices lessons learned adopted I do think that I mentioned in my presentation that HR 6390 the allowing for the EV infrastructure to be on American farms that that's going to help a lot too because we're electrifying not just our personal vehicles which we always that's usually what I think about first but also all forms of transportation here so the tractors and other farm equipment and so the more that we can bring that technology to the forefront of rural communities that's going to help further drive adoption too so I could go on but I'll let others answer if you want them to thanks Joe how does this look like from your perspective as someone who makes these chargers to be installed in different areas different types of building certainly the the rural community is a little more challenge because let's face it the vehicles do have a limited range and you know so that said it would put the requirement for you know the faster chargers to help get them from point A to point B you know I personally think that in the big picture we're only 10 years into this in terms of the vehicles alone the combustion engine has been around over a hundred years so I think the improvements the R&D is going to be within the nanotechnology of the battery itself the smaller the battery could be the longer the range is and over time it the problem should work itself out but in agreement I've we talked to many rural communities rural locations and because of their commutes are longer it is a it is going to be a challenge and really nothing more to add than what Catherine said event please feel free to jump in and then we'll hear from well what a workforce development lens I think we can't just only plant charging stations I think we have to think about jobs for the same rural communities they have to also be a part of the infrastructure so I think job training being attached to it where we can find actual well-paying jobs within those communities I know for charter health sometimes if we have a charter charging station in the middle of Montana I'm like you know it's sometimes hard to get someone there versus if you know we can train in that area so a lot of forecasting to your your workforce development folks it's very helpful for people to know what kind of jobs are coming what kind of what kind of technology is coming to their communities and now can you tell me what kind of jobs are connected to the technology we just can't bring in technology and everybody on the coast and everybody in big metropolitan cities get the great jobs right we jobs are remote it's ways for everyone to be a part of this so I definitely say for rural communities showing that not only is technology coming and need to be accessible but also the jobs that are related to it right and I would just add I think we're seeing a lot more excitement in our rural communities around the number of trucks coming on to the market that has people perking up a little bit and showing more interest in electrified transportation but I would I see a lot of opportunity for smaller rural businesses and communities to benefit from the ownership of these stations and so certainly it's important to be building out our big networks running through rural America but to any extent that we can bring the funding to these communities and not necessarily just the companies who will build the infrastructure in the communities but allow our business owners to own and manage and run these stations you know and get them set up initially in an affordable way so that they can see benefit once there is more mass adoption on the market that can come with a big win for our communities as well. Great thank you so much so we've gotten a couple questions from the audience and one I'm not sure exactly who might be interested in answering this so I will put it up as a grab bag but it's a good one and it's the the questioner is thinking of wind and solar energy deployment and how those resources are becoming increasingly common on our grid especially in certain parts of the country that are you know quickly displacing fossil fuels and how those resources are more or less available during a typical day just because of the profile of those resources how should our strategy for charging infrastructure take advantage of renewable energy when it is most available and cheapest and again I'll let anyone weigh in on that I think it's a really interesting question. Well I'm happy to jump in so first of all yeah I love it that wind and solar is becoming nice to work for the solar industry association so big solar supporter here but I think that it's great that more of that is coming on board and that does then just all the more reason why utilities have to be at the table when we're talking about infrastructure too because they know the load profiles they know when they're more likely to see a peak demand and we know that over time that's that used to be at like the one o'clock two o'clock time now that's shifted to six seven eight p.m. so they're aware of these trends and so they'll know also I mean with wind and solar profiles do they need to have at some charging locations that are more high usage you know seeing more drivers come up and pull to take advantage of this maybe they need to have a storage bank there or something so yeah let's get the utilities involved Laura I'm sure you're shaking your head yes sure yeah I think that's where managed charging is very important and you see it changing as we have more solar adoptions so right now you know the push is to get people to charge overnight that's when power is going to be cheapest and that's going to avoid our peak but as we see more solar online you know if there's excess solar on the grid we're going to want to encourage people to be charging midday when that asset is available and that can kind of help manage some of the duck curve issues we reverse that curve you start to see and some parts of the country well thank you for that that's a really great set of answers and I'll take a second just to plug we covered this topic from a couple different perspectives last summer as part of our infrastructure series or modernizing the energy system series and our June 25th briefing perhaps our social media team could retweet a link to the briefing but we had that was part of our leveraging grid edge integration for resilience and decarbonization we had a speaker specifically talking about how charging behavior can be influenced by the availability of these resources so when I'm looking off to this direction that's because I'm trying to get my dates right and make sure I say the right briefing multiple monitors so I'm not that that's the excuse we actually just got another really important question I think a really interesting question from the audience and this one comes to us from Capitol Hill again I'll open this up for anyone who wants to answer it but the question is what model was used to build out the national network of gas stations and how applicable is that model to building an EV infrastructure there any lessons learned from how well that went or how well it didn't go that we might want to play you know pay forward for how we build that electric vehicle charging I will say this I don't know the model exactly but we we do work with the fuels institute and some folks in the oil industry and they are not the enemy they actually have been very helpful with sharing information I always like to share that but one thing that that blew some some folks mind is with charging like required lighting you know is it in a safe space like those basic things when you go to a gas station normally is it near a restroom like you know when you think of families pulling over to refuel if we're looking at charging as a new fueling source right so it needs to come with the whole thing so the safety of it all I think is one of the models that we have to start looking at I know we kind of see it in a very silo just the charging station we're just putting it in the ground but really when you think about mass EV adoption and everyone using it what does it look like for a mom with kids in a car to pull over and charge and use public charging is it safe is it clean we do a lot of preventive maintenance at Charter help to go out and make sure that the charging stations that are out there actually working so I would say the safety part of it is something that we probably could take a look at in the surrounding areas when we talk about EV charging it's probably something that we can take from the gas and oil industry that's a great point a totally great point and yeah just having charging stations out in the middle of nowhere without all those other amenities it's a great point um I'm a question and Joe maybe we'll start with you this time and then we'll go through the the rest of the the panel in order to hear what others have to say but this one's about public-private partnerships and I'm curious what you see as opportunities for the private sector and the public sector and maybe the nonprofit sector but the private sector and the public sector to work together to build out and bolster EV charging infrastructure beyond what's already happening sure um and Dan I alluded to it earlier the the two different sources the two different programs that we were constantly you know working with and one is that that 30% alternative fueling infrastructure tax credit um it's it has been available almost every year and then one year and then like two years like maybe 2019 2020 it wasn't available and then 2021 it was available and it even said oh for anybody who did the installations in the last you know two years when they didn't have it you could you can now apply these costs well many people made decisions maybe not because the credit wasn't there so you know my big ask from the the policy side is you know if you're gonna make it available make it available in the beginning of the year the the retro um availability you know only does so much but but that said our private customers they were making decisions the it almost seemed like the urgency was there and they were taking advantage knowing that the the alternative fueling infrastructure tax credit may or may not be renewed so that that and in in terms of our contribution we are educating our our customers on that um and then over the years you know not all states had a program many many do now but but again we're their biggest cheerleaders we're gonna we're gonna market it and and pitch in and and help um and all I would say is the more concise that program is that the easier to understand um the more active it's going to be and it's usually the goal of that state to use all that funding and again Maryland is my backyard Maryland had a very successful program where to get the money it was show a picture of the install fill out the two page rebate and show the invoices of the total cost if you could imagine that's it's then easy to administer for the the state program and it's easy for the the customers and you know frankly having a large sales force it's the more the easier that program is the easier we're gonna get that word out for them other comments across the panel about potential for additional public partnerships oops am I you're back okay good right um sorry sorry about that any other comments from across the panel about potential for public private partnerships yeah I just added here that about with the nevy funding too I mean there is a requirement of the 20 cost share um with the state plans and so we're looking forward to seeing how states are going to be addressing that and then the company is how they're looking to partner with states and just you know as as who was saying that this were 10 years into this market in so we're just at the cusp of some really creative innovative ideas here um so I'm looking forward to the innovation that's coming from from the nevy funds I also just a comment going back to the question about the gas stations and the network there sorry to jump back to that but I just I think it's important to keep in mind that it's so different with electric technologies I mean let's even just think about the medium and heavy duty sector that in the past if you're driving a big semi you're going to have to go to the central fueling like to the gas station and fuel up there but now if you are a FedEx or an Amazon or whatever you can you have already that electric infrastructure at your facility and so you have your own hub where you can charge from and so it's it's really different um there are some things like Ivette was saying I think the apples to apples in terms of the safety the lighting wasn't like things like that for sure but it really is it's a whole other way of doing transportation I would say I would say with the intersectionality of private and public and even nonprofit I think we share different information and different lenses we work with different groups of folks so I would say fully understanding like what's at stake when it comes to operations and maintenance and the workforce like what what really are we working with what kind of pipeline is really available because I think in a private world you know where maybe a lot more money is available decisions are just being made and I think in the public world we may have a lens on the workforce and other things that might not always be added into the equation so I think that's important also limiting systemic barriers understanding what kind of things we are maybe not even thinking of that we can put in place that will really limit a community to you know to take advantage of EV charting and the benefits of it so I definitely think working with some public and nonprofit organizations will help give private sectors and vice versa you know what I'm saying the information you need and I think private sector really is good with telling us like look this is the bottom line and then these other areas actually understand how it works and there's no assumptions there so I think a lot of education catching barriers those are the places where we can intersect and really help move ev massive option thanks for that that's really interesting um another question maybe of more of a clarifying question from the audience and this has to do with compatibility are there any issues with how different makes and models are charged that would have to be addressed as we build out an ev charger network are certain are certain are certain brands do they have different requirements or are we moving towards something where you know situation where every every electric vehicle can basically be plugged by you know every available charger on Joe that you might have sort of technical thoughts about that and that I'd be very interested in if that's the case how you would train workforces to to be able to you know sort of take care of both types of EVSE sure Dan I could kick that off so for the AC chargers the Society of Automotive Engineers did agree to one standard and that's called the the J1772 Tesla is playing by their own rules and you know for the reasons of their infrastructure but that said they also provide their drivers with an adapter that then allows them to use the J1772 so that's that's working out well um and there's talk that Tesla will you know share with the non Tesla made cars so that's still kind of to be seen in terms of the cars that are made for North America there there is now two plugs out there but that problem is kind of working itself out one is the CCS one which is more more more common there's a second one called the Ackerman is Chattano and that's I believe just a couple of the Asian manufacturers and you know that's slightly changing you know to your point to your question having everybody agreeing to one standard like they did for the AC charging I think we're going to be there soon it would make it less complicated it would make less options with the manufacturing process the stocking and the overall build and again it's all about efficiency and with greater efficiency of everybody standardizing it should bring down the costs of the chargers yeah I was going to say I think we're moving towards standardization I mean that's such a layered question I think I think that would that is ideal and that is the goal um I I do however as far as like yes right now we do have different kind of charging stations different trainings and it is a big fragmented which is what makes our technicians very attractive to people because we are trained in most of your software providers your um your manufacturers our technicians have over 15 to 20 certifications individually right from down to have permission to to work on their assets so that is a that's a that's a hard push so I am also hoping that standardization comes right and we can like move this in bigger chunks a lot quicker but Charger Health has has done groundwork with getting folks trying that can pretty much walk up to any charging machine and fix it so great thanks for that go ahead Laura please sure I'll just jump in from the utility perspective we also see the writing on the wall with the CCS and so we got permission from the state with our latest charger that we're installing um it it does simultaneous charging but to have it be two CCS plugs instead of one of each um and in terms of different brands of stations we we've been trying out a few different brands um and we you know we're testing out software to see which makes the most sense for us in terms of reliability and access to data but it does come the subscription piece the saw everything comes with its own software costs and so you know it can be more affordable for us moving forward just to choose one brand and kind of stick to that but at the same time we'd also be beholden to that company and whatever they decide to do with their subscription costs at the end of the day so that's been a consideration for us thanks that's interesting um so this brings us to our final question because we're almost at time um and I'm going to Catherine maybe we'll start with you and we'll just go through the order um we'll treat this as a lightning round so maybe one or two things uh it'd be great to get sort of different perspectives and bonus points if you don't repeat what the previous person said so that gets harder for a vet and Laura but relatively easy for Catherine and Joe um what should 10 years from now look like in terms of EV charger build out if we do this the right way um what what's the what's your vision for the EV charging infrastructure in 2032 okay so in 2032 um we've got that you can get from point A to point B and not have to not have to worry that you can't stop and get a charge um and then beyond that then we have further build out at some of the places where it's um there's high usage so maybe that's in cities maybe that's um yeah just where the high usage spots those haven't identified and then we've got additional banks of chargers and that's kind of what Tesla's done so following their their lead Joe she took my answer no uh I don't know what to add you know other than that you know we're talking to the convenience stores um many of them are interested uh and and it's you know it's public information just um and not directly through us but uh Conoco uh and Phillips uh 66 just had an announcement yesterday shell has made some announcements and then some of just the independent convenience stores themselves and again we just have to keep in mind you know the majority of your charging is not going to be you know away from your your your home um you know my belief again it's it's going to be your home it's going to be your workplace but that said the the the convenience stores gas stations those highway rest stops just like Catherine said where you see the Tesla's there should be a bunch that's open to everybody and not that the Tesla drivers and that's you know usually state or county property so if they could let Tesla do it um I really see those filling out uh very in the near term future you know really optimistic that the word range anxiety is going to go away that from your perspective 2032 what does it look like on every charging asset right like requirements standards the whole nine um kind of like car insurance like if this infrastructure is going to go you can use our rats are reliably as a service subscription uh and then but next is jobs you know um how can we really push towards that equitable inclusive diverse workforce that we all said we wanted in 2020 and hear the grand opportunity for us to just like open up the gates and allow folks to not only have access to charging but but access to the jobs that are supporting this infrastructure which it's with a lot of money a lot of well-paying jobs to make sure that we're hitting those those goals as well of being inclusive um in that area um of pushing out the technology thanks Laura you get the last word what does San Isabel service territory look like 10 years from now in terms of charging sure for us I think it's going to be a matter of not having to go out of your way to charge so if you were taking a trip or you were going to go to that restaurant anyway you're not going to think twice they're going to have a charging facility for you if you're going to go get groceries it's just natural you're going to be hooking up while you go get groceries um you know if you've a pretty standard place to work um you can expect charging facilities at your place of work and it's you're you're not going to be mapping out a route based on charging facilities you expect that they're there well thanks for that that's a great last word to end on and Catherine Joe Avet and Laura thanks for being incredible panelists for us today and helping me helping ESI helping our audience understand sort of the the challenge before us with easy charge or build out and um what the opportunities are as well and where all of these you know public private partnerships cost trends of all of these factors will come into play um and so hopefully we'll be able to live up to the your visions of 2032 so thanks so much for being excellent panelists um I would also like to take a moment to thank my colleagues at ESI uh Dan O'Brien Omri, Emma Allison, Anna, and Savannah for all of their hard work putting the session together today it's a lot of work and um they do all of it um I do very little of it um but these this is such a great panel and thanks so much to everyone who made a contribution on ESI side we also have three of our four summer interns already with us Christina, Stephanie, and Abbie thanks so much for helping us behind the scenes with live tweeting and briefing notes and all of that stuff too so thanks very much um we uh my colleague Dan O'Brien just put up a slide this is a survey link uh if folks in our audience have two minutes to share their feedback with us we'd really really appreciate it we read every response um and we did uh I'm I probably should have said this in the thank yous but thank you to our audience with tons and tons and tons of questions that came in if we weren't able to get to yours I'm sorry for that but we did get to quite a few of them um but please take a moment if you had any audio issues video issues ideas for future sessions like I said we really do read every response and so it's very valuable feedback for us to have um we have some additional briefings coming up um it wouldn't be you would know it wasn't really me doing the closing if I didn't plug upcoming briefing so we have um June 13th uh we will be looking at uh issues around wildfires uh which is an unfortunate topic but a really really important one um I'm looking forward to that learning more about that issue and um what we can do uh with respect to climate adaptation and resilience um to help protect our communities we will also have briefings about extreme heat uh and the final briefing in this series which is the scaling up innovation to drive down a mission series offshore wind energy coming up later in June as well so please be sure to visit www.esa.org sign up for climate change solutions our bi-weekly newsletter no one ever regrets doing that uh and then also RSVP for the remaining briefings in our series and if you want to go back and look at anything that uh Katherine or Joe or Revet or Laura or any of our previous panelists said uh or presented of course everything's available free um on our website that concludes our session for today hope everyone has a great rest of your Thursday and we'll see you back soon for our extreme heat briefing or excuse me wildfires briefing on June 13th thanks so much