 And welcome everybody. Nick Lund from Maine Audubon here. Welcome to the fifth in our new climate spotlight series where we're featuring some of Maine's most innovative thinkers, businesses, and conservationists with an aim to help Maine people understand how climate change impacts Maine. Today our presentation is called transportation, Maine's biggest climate hurdle. Transportation and heating remain the biggest contributors to Maine's overall carbon dioxide emissions and it's clear that if Maine is to meet our ambitious climate reduction goals, we'll need to make major strides in reducing the amount of emissions from the transportation sector. To help us understand how those reductions might happen, we are honored to be joined by two people on the leading edge of transportation policy and technology. Emily Green from the Conservation Law Foundation and Barry Woods from Revision Energy. I'll do some more introductions in a moment, but I have a few housekeeping items before we get started. First, part of the reason that we are hosting these presentations is to raise awareness of the work of the Maine Climate Council, which is deliberating now on a climate action plan set for release in December, which will guide Maine to our climate reduction goals. The climate council is hosting a pair of public meetings this month to share what they've learned so far in terms of public comments, cost benefit analysis, and other important updates. The first meeting is tomorrow, September 9th from 9 to 12th, and I am putting the registration link in the chat for that. The second meeting is, which they're talking about different things, they're not covering the same ground, is September 16th also from 9 to 12th, and I'm putting that registration link in the chat. We strongly encourage you to register and join those public meetings from the climate council if you can. Finally, for people who want some more insight and analysis on these September public meetings from the Maine Climate Council, or for whatever reason you're unable to join the public meetings, conservation groups in Maine are excited to announce what we're calling our halftime show on September 17th. This is going to be a one-hour recap of the two climate council September meetings with insight and analysis from some of the best policy minds in the conservation community. It's free to register, it's again September 17th, the day after the second climate council meeting from noon to one. We would love to have you join, and again I'm putting that registration link in the chat down below. Emily Green is senior attorney for CLF Maine, where she focuses on issues including climate change, clean energy, and ocean conservation. Previously she was an assistant attorney general providing comprehensive legal services to Maine's Department of Environmental Protection, and most relevant among her accomplishments today is Emily was a member of the Transportation Working Group for the Maine Climate Council. Welcome Emily. Oops, and I'm hearing that I may, apparently I wasn't sending those links to everybody, so hold on. I was sending them to the panelists and not the attendees. Apologies. Here we go, let's try that again. Should be three links there on top of each other. The first two are the climate council meetings, and the second is the climate halftime show. So welcome Emily. Barry Woods is the director of electric vehicle innovation at the Maine-based renewable energy company Revision Energy. In his role he deals with everything from residential electric vehicle chargers to relationships with electric vehicle charging vendors to helping working, to helping workplaces develop electric vehicle charging resources for their employees. We are pleased to have Revision back presenting with us after having Phil Coop speak a few weeks back on our rooftop solar presentation. Please welcome Barry Woods. Thank you. So just before we get started, finally, we're going to, we have an hour today, just under an hour now. Emily will speak first, followed by Barry, and we hopefully will wrap up around 1145 or so for questions. If you have questions out there, and I hope that you do, please type them not into the chat box here, but into the Q&A box. If you look along the panel on the lower side there, see two speech balloons with the Q&A. That allows us to collect all the questions, and we will answer them at the end of the program. We are filming today. This is a Zoom webinar, which means that all your, the attendees' video and audio is off. So questions and comments, please put in the Q&A or in the chat. And that is all. Thank you to our panelists, and now I'm going to turn it over to Emily Green to get started. Thanks. Great. Thanks so much, Nick, and good morning, everybody. I am very pleased to be here, and it's great to see so many people tuning in. Nick, can you give me a thumbs up if you're seeing my screen? Excellent. All right. So I'm going to talk about what it means that transportation is Maine's biggest emissions challenge and why that is the case. And then I'm going to give an overview of some solutions, including some of those that the Maine Climate Council Transportation Working Group has recommended to achieve the state's mandatory decarbonization targets of 80% by 2050 and 45% by 2030. Now, Nick mentioned the Maine Climate Council, and I just wanted to let you know real quick what the Transportation Working Group is, since I'll be referencing them a handful of times. Basically, there were six working groups formed of different sorts of experts to work during the six first months of 2020 to develop recommendations that are now under consideration by the Maine Climate Council, which will ultimately be putting them together into a climate action plan that is due by the end of the year. So just a quick word about Conservation Law Foundation, where I work. For those of you who are unfamiliar with us, we are a region-wide nonprofit focused on protecting New England's environment for the benefit of all people and for future generations. We focus on people, natural resources, healthy and resilient communities, and sustaining a vibrant economy. To address the region's environmental harms, we use the law, science, and markets, and our strategies for bringing about change include creating and enforcing environmental laws to hold polluters and institutions accountable, driving investment in equitable solutions to environmental and climate change harms, and developing innovative and interdisciplinary legal strategies to restore and protect natural resources, create healthy and resilient communities, and stem the tide of climate change. As Nick said, I am a senior attorney at CLF. I work out of our Portland Maine office. We've got offices in five of the six New England states. My primary focus is on energy and climate change, and that mostly means advocacy to advance decarbonizing and moving away from reliance on fossil fuels in our buildings, our vehicles, and our electricity generation. I direct CLF's transportation electrification work, and as Nick mentioned, I served on the Maine Climate Council transportation working group. So, my presentation is going to be divided into two halves. First, I'm going to talk about the transportation emissions problems, and then I'm going to give a high-level introduction to some of the critical solutions. So, let's get started with the problem. So, the major problem here, what you're looking at is a pie chart depicting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 segregated by sector. And as you can see, transportation contributes more than a quarter of these climate damaging emissions and is the largest share. It's followed closely by electric power generation, which actually was only bumped into second place within the last few years. Now, what this pie chart doesn't show is the trajectory over time. So, since 1990, gross U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have increased by about 4%. However, in the same time period, transportation greenhouse gas emissions have increased by more than 20%. So, transportation has really been emerging in recent years as a focal point in efforts to decarbonize and address climate change. Before we move on, I just wanted to really quickly define transportation emissions. Primarily what we're talking about when we say that is emissions that come from burning fossil fuels to power our cars, trucks, ships, trains, planes, and other equipment. So, what does this pie chart look like in Maine? Well, as you'll see, transportation is an even bigger piece of the pie here. And just for comparison, keep your eye on the dark blue sliver. So, here we are at the national level and here we are in Maine. So, the major takeaway here is that transportation in Maine and, in fact, throughout New England is an even greater share of the emissions pie, responsible for more than 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions right here in Maine. And of course, what that means is that if we are to tackle climate change and if we are to achieve the state's mandatory statutory decarbonization levels, we absolutely must address transportation. So, why is the transportation sector such a persistent problem? Well, let's take a closer look at greenhouse gas emissions in Maine over time. Now, the United States and New England in particular has reduced greenhouse gas emissions from electric power generation over the last 30 years or so. And as you can see here on the slide, you've got transportation in purple up at the top. And then you've got residential, commercial, industrial and electric represented in the bottom half of the chart in lines that more or less tend to decline slightly over time. At the same time that we have done a relatively good job of cleaning up emissions from electricity generation, transportation emissions have actually increased. And frankly put, people are driving more and they're driving bigger, dirtier vehicles. So think SUVs, pickup trucks, the sort of big vehicles that have really become the norm, even for folks that maybe don't necessarily need the extra capacity for work or for a large family or what have you. Now, crazily enough, these overall emissions increases in transportation have occurred even while individual new vehicles get cleaner. So what I mean by that is that vehicle emissions in new vehicles become lower each year on a per mile basis thanks to federal standards that impose minimum miles per gallon and vehicle emission requirements. So consider for instance of the average MPG for new vehicles in 1990 was 28, compared with nearly 40 in 2018. And yet we're still seeing this transportation increase. So in some, even as vehicles have become more efficient, Americans have been driving more miles and buying more SUVs and pickup trucks, which have lower gas mileage. Freight trucking is also on the rise. So there we go. This next chart really depicts the point. So this is main's breakdown of emissions from within the transportation sector. And as you can see, well over three quarters of the pie comes from driving, driving cars, vans, trucks, and nearly 60% comes from the vehicles that you and I drive around. So personal vehicles. Let's take a quick look at this issue at an even more granular level. Here are transportation emissions in Portland, Maine, where I am. And as you can see, the per person transportation emissions have increased more than 20% in the last 30 years. That's the same time period that we've been focusing on in the last few slides. This per person rise is quite high, even in comparison with other metropolitan areas throughout the country. Now, lest you think that climate damaging greenhouse gas emissions are the only vehicle emissions that we're concerned about, let's talk about air pollution. So cars and trucks, their tailpipes are also responsible for spewing air pollution that can be directly tied to detrimental human health, detrimental human health impacts, excuse me. And that includes emissions of particulate matter and ground levels ozone, also known as smog. So who suffers the most from this air pollution? Typically the communities that have historically been the most disadvantaged, like communities of color and low income populations in Maine, air pollution is particularly harmful for our most vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly, and people who already suffer from health issues. Now, in case the human health angle wasn't compelling enough on its own, it is important to recognize that respiratory illnesses and other diseases that are exacerbated by air pollution pose a real and quantifiable problem with significant costs in terms of both productivity and our healthcare system. So just consider for a moment that asthma is responsible for 8100 emergency room visits and 13 deaths a year. And air pollution attributable to transportation is one of the things that contributes and exacerbates that. So with that rather dismal outlook, let's move on to the second half of the presentation, solutions. So given the scope of the transportation emissions problem and urgency demanded by climate change, not to mention the state's mandatory decarbonization targets, which require 45% emissions reductions by 2030, no solution at this point is too big or too small. And at the Maine Climate Council Transportation Working Group, this reality was really reflected in discussions which covered everything ranging from alternate fuels to sidewalk enhancements to speed limits, entire inflation levels, to rethinking how we work, get educated, play outside, get healthcare, frankly, how we live. We need to reform our transportation systems aggressively and with urgency. Now strategies for doing so can be categorized in two main buckets. Strategies that help people drive less and strategies that clean up the vehicles that we're driving. I'm going to introduce some of the major solutions in each of these categories. It's not going to be comprehensive or exhaustive in the interest of time. And then Barry's going to take a deeper dive into one of the major ones, which is electrification. So to begin with, how do we help people drive less? Basically, we give them attractive alternatives. So major alternatives if you live in a metropolitan area include bus systems and commuter rails. The reason why I've emphasized right size transit here is to make the point that there is no one size fits all transit solution. Every community is going to have different needs. Buses and trains typically work well in densely populated areas or for connecting people between different densely populated areas. In more rural places like in northern Maine, it often just won't make sense to have a big bus driving around mostly empty all the time. So we want to make sure that when we're talking about transit and when we're talking about helping people drive less, we're also talking about things like shuttles and vans that run on fixed routes, as well as on-call shuttles and vans that respond in places that just don't have the geography or the population to support fixed routes or widespread fixed routes. In some communities, we're even talking about things like shared vehicles. In fact, shared bikes or scooters might even make sense depending on a community's needs. In most places, you'd ideally have a mix of transportation options that work together. Now in order for transit to work, there are a number of criteria that need to be met. The option needs to be safe. So this has really been borne out by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic where we've seen both transit ridership drop precipitously due to unsafe conditions or perceived unsafe conditions. And we've also seen that folks without cars often don't have the option to switch and are therefore potentially disproportionately exposed to the virus. So again, transit needs to be safe. Transit also needs to be convenient. It shouldn't take somebody all day to get to the grocery store. And if it does, then it's really not a viable transportation option. And furthermore, transit needs to be accessible and affordable. If someone can't get to the route or can't afford the fare, then it's not helping. Now, as you can see here in this chart, national averages do show that public transportation produces significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile than private vehicles. And that, of course, is because you have a lot of people riding around in one vehicle, excuse me, one large vehicle, as opposed to one vehicle per person. The main climate council transportation working group highlighted the need for investment in public transit in its recommendation to the climate council, noting that the statewide systems need to be improved in terms of capacity, frequency of service and connectivity, among other things, and noting that current funding at 86 cents per capita is frankly dismal and distressingly low when compared to the national median of $5 per capita. In the interest of time, I'm going to skim through this next one, although it is another very important approach for helping people drive less. The concept of smart growth is basically trying to address the root of our transportation issues, which is that people live far away from where they work, shop, see a doctor, go to school, recreate, etc. So the idea here is to develop communities that foster and enable healthy habits that are also good for the environment, like the ability to walk or bike or carpool, short distances, the ability to conveniently get healthy foods or see a doctor. In other words, the ability to live your life and do the things you need and want to do without burning excess fossil fuels in the process. Along these lines, the main climate council transportation working group recommended a focus on what they called priority areas development through local, regional, and state land use policies to encourage things such as integrating climate goals into municipal and regional planning, expanding bike and pedestrian facilities, and supporting private investment that will both spur jobs and affordable housing in these priority areas. The priority areas development again was the name of that recommendation. So now switching gears a little bit, let's move on to strategies for cleaning up vehicles. So again, the two major buckets here are helping people drive less and then cleaning up the vehicles that people are driving. So briefly, the clean car standards is kind of the colloquial term to refer to two different sets of federal regulations, EPA's tailpipe emissions rules under the Clean Air Act, and the U.S. Department of Transportation's minimum fuel efficiency standards. So these dictate how many miles per gallon cars must get at a minimum, and they also limit how much greenhouse gases can get spewed out the tailpipe. Now under the Obama administration, the clean car standards were updated through a public participatory process that aggressively ramped up fuel efficiency and reduced emissions year over year. At the time, these standards were known to be one of the country's most important approaches to tackling emissions for forestalling climate change. Last summer, however, after various fits and starts, the Trump administration finalized one aspect of their rollback of these rules. They concluded that the states could no longer deviate from the federal standards to impose more stringent limitations than those of the federal government. That's something that a large number of states have been doing, including five of the six New England states, including Maine. And then earlier this year, the federal government finished the rollback by promulgating what's shown here in the bottom circle, the safer, affordable fuel-efficient vehicles rule for model years 2021 to 2026 passenger cars and light trucks, so-called because they liked the acronym SAFE. And basically what this rollback does is it promulgated weaker new federal standards, which, when compared with the standards that have been on the books, are projected to results in increasing nationwide greenhouse gas emissions by 867 million metric tons, increasing fuel consumption by 84 billion gallons, not to mention increasing premature deaths due to the additional air pollution. Now a large coalition of states have sued the administration over this new rule, as well as a coalition of nonprofit health and environmental organizations from around the country, including Conservation Law Foundation. The litigation is ongoing and will certainly continue until after the November election, so stay tuned for that one. Finally, the last strategy that I wanted to highlight was electrification. So how else do you clean up vehicles by switching away from gasoline as a fuel at the same time that you're cleaning up the electricity grid? So why are electric vehicles or as we fondly call them EVs better for climate change? Because they're more efficient than their traditional gas guzzling counterparts and therefore they're responsible for fewer greenhouse gas emissions even when you include the emissions attributable to electricity generation. Now this map shows that how clean the EV is does depend on the fuel mix creating the electricity. In the U.S. today, the average EV produces greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to driving a gasoline vehicle that gets 88 miles per gallon, which is far cleaner than the average new gas powered car which are currently averaging around 31 miles per gallon. As you can see to the, well you know where New England is, as you can see in New England, our electricity generation portfolio is quite clean, which means that driving an average EV here is equivalent to driving a gas powered vehicle that gets over 110 miles per gallon. And what's really exciting is that EVs will continue to get cleaner as states continue to implement policies, many of which are already on the books, to increasingly move toward wind and solar and other renewables for electricity generation. So again, the EV that you buy today might get 114 miles per gallon, but in five or 10 years that number is going to be a lot higher. And what I mean by that is the equivalent of that number of miles per gallon in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. What's more, electric vehicles do not have tailpipes and so they're not responsible for air pollution on our streets or in our cities or in our schoolyards or in other places where tailpipe emissions tend to congregate and really cause problems for typically already disadvantaged communities. And there are a couple of other assets about EVs. So because electric vehicles are essentially large electric batteries on wheels, they also present an array of exciting opportunities to improve the efficiencies of our electricity grid, which can lead to an array of benefits, for instance, enabling more renewable power to come online, deferred electric grid maintenance and even cost savings. So recognizing the importance of electrification, Maine's Climate Council Transportation Working Group recommended that Maine focus on expanding electrification of light duty vehicles to between 50 to 90 percent of the fleet and heavy duty vehicles to between 55 to 80 percent of the fleet by 2050. And with that, I will turn it over to Barry for a deep dive into electric vehicles. So thank you very much for your time. Emily, thank you so much for that overview. That was fantastic. And hopefully we'll get Barry's video back up and going. Again, if you have questions, please type them into the Q&A box at the bottom. We got a couple already and we will get them after Barry. So Barry, take it away. Nick, can you hear me? I can hear you all set. Can you see everything? Great. Okay. Well, thank you so much Emily for that presentation and for CLF's good work in this area. And Nick, thank you for the invitation to speak with Maine Audubon and these folks as part of your climate series. And also just to reiterate a number of points that Emily's brought up. I mean, I think the Maine Climate Council's emphasis on transportation represents a really remarkable opportunity for those of us in the state. So I thought I would talk today just generally about electric vehicle technology and I think some of the more interesting opportunities that it presents, a little bit about the market and a little bit about the electric vehicle charging infrastructure and as much as it's sort of the flip side of the same coin in order to get people to get interested and treat the technology seriously. So part of the slide deck, there we go. I want to just give a brief intro to revision energy whom I'm sure many of you know about. So I'm not going to belabor the point but we are an energy transition company that looks for opportunities to help clients transition away from fossil fuel. And we're in Maine, obviously in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We're a certified B Corp which I take to mean that sustainability is baked into our DNA and we're also 100% employee owned which I think we're the first solar company in the U.S. to achieve that standard. So I think we are tied pretty closely to the communities in which we work and we do a lot of commercial and residential projects. We've done some fairly significant EB charging projects to date including in the state of Maine working with Charge Point and Efficiency Maine Trust and putting in what will be I think the backbone for the DC fast charging network that will help people transit longer distances within the state and that's sort of the first investment that's been made in that area. But we've had a lot of experience to date with both residential and commercial applications for some of the lower amperage charging. One of the reasons that it's really captivating us and it should be to you is that if you look at this house which is really a metaphor for any building this residence we're starting to see increasing interest on the part of our customer base not only to be driving electric and putting in charging stations but to tie it more directly to the household grid in particular the solar array on the roof that can provide a 100% clean energy electrical energy and also tying it to some type of battery storage which in Maine you know is a very common additional energy safeguard that homes have especially in the winter instead of instead of having a propane generator you can essentially create a micro grid now with with battery storage and this is all part of I think a larger movement towards what's being termed beneficial electrification which is coming up with technologies that essentially replace fossil fuel energy for day-to-day living and day-to-day use of appliances and the vehicle is I think one of the most profound opportunities that we have in order to help hasten this transition and that's really because the vehicle represents the most significant load and I'm going to focus primarily on light duty passenger although clearly medium size heavy duty vehicles are starting to have much greater opportunities to electrify more manufacturers are engaged in that area but it's been the light duty that I think you know I think represents at least for the moment I think the greatest the greatest the biggest low-hanging fruit for us to convert to electricity and as this graph shows from an appliance standpoint it represents the single largest load on the order of six to ten kilowatts per day as compared to a lot of these other appliances which in the case of the household usually it's the electric dryer that's the largest load which is not a daily occurrence typically unless you have a busy household and so the other thing about the vehicle is not only is it have a large load but it's also pretty flexible in terms of when you need to charge it so it has an we have an opportunity to control when we charge that which is I think very significant in terms of the grid-based interactivity and grid-based benefits and when I say six to ten kilowatts per day that's that's on average thinking about the average commute use of the vehicle anywhere from 20 to 40 miles of use per day and the car batteries are getting bigger meaning that right now I'd say the standard for the all battery electrics is about 60 kilowatt hours and they're on their way towards 100 kilowatt hours which Tesla has as some of its battery choices I think it's going to probably become the standard will be 100 kilowatt hour batteries so even on a daily load of six to ten kilowatt hours that represents maybe 10 percent of the overall battery capacity and so I want you to be thinking about what that might mean for other potential applications because you know part of my talk today is just to kind of begin the process of getting you to think about driving electric the environmental benefits and and and where it might fit into your day-to-day use and and the implications for all of us in terms of of how we look at our cars and look at look at energy so the car is a pretty interesting opportunity and I want to go back for a second but talk about Emily's slide and I apologize if this one's a little bit not quite as in clean of detail but I wanted to just point out that Maine you know certainly transportation like duty passenger represents a huge emission source of emissions and the other side of the pie is primarily built environment residential commercial industrial so together you know comprising about 93 percent of the emission outflow in Maine and I want us to think about how when transportation transitions it actually becomes a symbiotic relationship with with the built environment because it's not only a question of the batteries being charged by clean energy sources but because such a low percentage of the batteries are being used for transportation applications on a day-to-day basis I think there's a way for us to creatively structure incentives and other other means to get consumers to relinquish some of that battery load to go to the toward the built environment to also help particularly during peak load times to you know cut down on on that emissions so it really is a rising tide you know lifts all ships and we need to be thinking about these vehicles not only as cleaner energy for transportation but cleaner sources of energy for many many other areas that we are interacting with daily in large measure that's because we don't use the cars as much as we think we do if you look at the bottom line you know it's pretty clear that our car is a stationary Indian about object for much of its life expectancy particularly at home at night and during the day back when we used to commute to work if you can remember that far back there's there's large periods of time the car is basically a static asset and what that translates into is Emily alluded is the opportunity to charge using different types of renewable energy sources which might otherwise because of their intermittency be lost but I also want us to think about the fact that the cars not only the stationary periods of time the cars during the day at rest also reflects an opportunity for the car to be disgorging energy too and so it's sort of a bi-directional flow and we are starting to see companies that are working with manufacturers to harness the battery for these types of applications so it's this concept of v2g is not really so much of a pie in the sky thought process as it was even five years ago we are starting to see companies like nlx and formata and others partnering with manufacturers to get access to batteries for these types of applications and the other thing I want you to think about is for those of you who aren't familiar with driving EVs I mean the reality is most people do charge their vehicles at home overnight when the grid is very much underutilized as well as during the day they can be charged when solar is most active and capture benefits directly from that clean energy source so the car is something that is becoming an integral part of the grid future and providing potentially value to the consumer where perhaps utilities will reimburse consumers for use of the certain percentage of their batteries at particular times of the day or of the year based on the need not something that you think about right now when you look out at your vehicle probably sitting in the driveway and how it can otherwise be connected it can't so that's one of the huge benefits and I think in order for this to be successful the transition to electrification and the transportation space we have to look at it as being disruptive in the purest form which means that it can't just be a little bit better than what we're driving particularly for the average consumer it has to be dramatically better and not only do we see the environmental benefits that Emily articulated but we see better driving experience in terms of silence smoothness torque reduced transportation costs in terms of operational costs and maintenance costs I think I checked yesterday and in Maine you'd save about 50 cents a quote E gallon even with gas prices hovering in the low $2 range and and so those are I think are pretty critical to why this is a dramatic improvement and the other thing is that we have until the until we have a level playing field until the technology reaches a certain point you know a lot of incentives that are available both for the cars in the form of state incentives right now with efficiency main trust and even charging infrastructure there's a federal tax credit available for residences and commercial and there's now as of last week we had an announcement by central main power and efficiency main trust for commercial workplace larger cluster level two charging pilot pilot study that provides some incentives for those types of applications so these are all these are all reasons for I think all of us to look seriously at driving electric and to appreciate why it's so much better than using an internal combustion vehicle in fact we do have vehicles now that are able to get 200 plus miles of range routinely Tesla by far represents the largest share market share but there's other companies like Kia and Hyundai and Nissan and GM that have products like the Bolt and the Leaf that fall I think well within typical consumer price points unfortunately I would have to say right now that probably the majority of the larger range longer range vehicles tend to be a little bit more expensive but you can still get the the Tesla Model 3 and the Y under 50,000 and qualify for efficiency main trust incentives and and I think the good news is that that's going to change if you look at where the industry analysts are projecting costs to go cost savings to go in the near future this is a Bloomberg chart I mean we're seeing that the crossover between combustion and electric could happen as soon as 2002 when the battery costs due to scale drop down to closer to $100 per kilowatt hour and that's obviously a pretty dramatic point in the inflection point in the adoption of of electric vehicles and very critical and so we are going to see I think the costs of these vehicles continue to go down much as solar panels have gone down over the last 15 years and there are choices now that adopt electricity in platforms that consumers are pushing like Emily suggested in terms of SUVs and pickups here's just three examples that are on the road and available in Maine and New England that can satisfy many consumers some of them are plug-in hybrid electrics some of them are all battery electrics like the Hyundai Kona and I urge you to take a look at those for your next vehicle because I think you'll be very surprised pleasantly surprised not only at the cost savings but at the performance and then I think we're now actually debating what is potentially going to be the best electric pickup to deploy these are just a couple of examples of the Tesla and the Nicola Badger pickups but we've got Rivian we've got Ford presenting their F-150 and a number of pickup platforms which are really critical to success in the in the light-duty passenger market particularly the fleet adoption and those are some of these are due out in the next year I'd have to say it's been a slow year in terms of new vehicles but I think next year we're going to see many many more models starting to deploy which is really important including models that capture consumers imaginations like retrofitted you know BW bug or I'm sorry bus which you know provides a glimpse of how the future you know what the future is going to be like for for consumer choices and then lastly just to speak briefly because I think again it's sort of the flip side of the coin people always want to know about charging because it's very different than a gas station model and people get concerned about you know range and wanting to figure out how to charge the goodness is that it's actually a lot simpler than most people are aware I've been driving since electric since 2011 and by far the majority of my charging occurs at home during the evening hours early morning hours and it can take an I can take an hour it can take eight hours depending on how much you use you can charge cars much faster now for highway travel with the DC fast charging networks that we've talked about basically any place that cars are parked for long periods of time I think represent an opportunity for cars to charge like workplaces and the other thing that I've noticed is that most drivers do think about charging fairly frequently and will take advantage of charging wherever they find it so they keep the battery full I think the batteries are going to continue to get larger I think that the concern about range and frequency of charge is going to diminish I think a hundred kilowatt hours is going to become the standard which translates into 300 plus miles of range which is really a robust amount of range on a day to day or even intermittent longer distance traveling you know behavior and so I urge you to take a car out for a spin and try it out but I also want you to be thinking about the implications of connecting these vehicles to the grid and what that might mean you know to you and to your business your your businesses and also thinking about from a charging standpoint these new pilots and how you might be able to help find hosts for central main power and efficiency main trust with their new programs because getting more charging out does increase visibility even if people don't use it as much as they think and I think it's important to get to help us transition and meet the very robust emission goals that the main climate council in the state have outlined so with that I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today feel free to to reach out to me directly by email or phone and thanks again Nick just to talk about this today thank you Barry that was fantastic and believe it or not we are right on schedule which is good because we have quite a few questions down here so without further ado I'm going to jump into the questions there for for for each of you or from the full presentation so I'm going to start with a question from Ernie I think to Emily Ernie asks to what extent do emissions from planes boats and cars contribute to transportation emission versus semis and other large trucks thanks for the question and I'll just refer back to one of my earlier slides that showed that in Maine rail marine and aviation is responsible for around 14% or so in comparison to about 27% coming from medium and heavy duty vehicles and those numbers aren't so different than they are at the national level so nationwide you also see more coming from on the road driving than you do from the rail marine etc excellent a couple questions one from from Gina and one from an anonymous attendee just now about the environmental impacts of the manufacture of the batteries or electric vehicles and then maybe the post-life handling of the waste and can you speak to those issues I can take a quick shot at that I mean I think that it's something that most manufacturers are very sensitive to I think for example BMW the i3 that's been out I mean they brag about that 90% of it is recyclable and it has some a lot of sustainable materials built into it so I think the industry is aware of this concern and to reiterate I think one of Emily's points it's always better to not drive if we can avoid you know driving I think whether it's an electric vehicle or a combustion vehicle that is certainly a good solution but clearly that's not that's not practical for a lot of people so I think that the manufacturers are very aware of it I've seen some studies out that suggest that the manufacturing emission-based burden by five years of operation is basically getting the car to net zero I think that's probably looking at the battery related issues I think the batteries are currently you know recyclable in large part as well so clearly it's it's a reasonable question and there's there's legitimate concerns it's it's something the industry is definitely working hard to to be able to provide a sustainable solution to great a question from Daniel I'd like to get to he says he love his next car to be an electric vehicle but he works from home and lives in a multi-unit dwelling is there any movement around the country to you know require builders or or require other you know folks to install community EV chargers in their dwellings yeah why don't I take a first stop at that one so yes absolutely there are some policies in place for instance in building codes or at least being talked about where things like chargers and multi-unit dwellings should be considered or should be required multi-unit dwellings are also often prioritized in the sort of programs that Barry mentioned earlier with respect to the efficiency main trust incentive programs and essential main powers make ready program where they basically offer incentives for EV chargers and again locations like multi-unit dwellings or public places are often given priority in situations like that yeah I think it's a growing concern I mean it's a growing concern main doesn't have as much of a housing inventory in the area multi-unit dwelling but you know we have condos and certainly we have we have a certain percentage of the housing stock that fits that I think we are seeing some interesting solutions in cities like Seattle which are creating like a DC fast charging cluster in dense neighborhoods so you can go in and charge for 20 minutes you know and be ready to go bring it back to your bring it back to your little parking space it's an area there's going to be more creativity and I think we will see building codes you know the other thing I'd add that's I think interesting in this area is that you know we're starting to see in Maine the ability to participate in community solar farms which from a generation standpoint means that you can live in an apartment and be a member of a solar you know project that that can fuel the vehicle so that's you know that's another interesting element to think about great and I should say too that efficiency main has a map on their website of charging locations around the state that folks can use you'll notice that one of those stations is at our gildland farm headquarters in Falmouth almost every morning we come in and someone's drinking some coffee and charging their car up it's pretty cool question from Eliza from Maine Audubon my colleague our advocacy director for Barry could you please provide some more details about the current state and federal incentives oh state and federal incentives for purchasing EVs yeah for purchasing EVs I think you know the state incentive is it's in the form of a point of sale rebate that efficiency main trusts administers it's $2,000 for all battery electrics I would go on their website to get details because they will list the eligible models I think they have to get more than 17 or 20 miles of electric range to qualify and be below $50,000 so that's one that's a pretty immediate one the feds still have a $7,500 tax credit available for certain manufacturers some manufacturers have basically exceeded the cap on that like Tesla and GM but you'd have to check with the manufacturers to see you know if the vehicle you're looking at still qualifies that's a tax incentive a credit so it's not necessarily available to everybody but it's a it's can be a significant reduction in the in the cost of the of the lease or the or the purchase great thanks a couple questions for Emily about the transportation working groups recommendations for the climate council there's a question from Marna about recommendations regarding EVs versus plug-in hybrids and also a question from Karen about TCI you want to talk about that sure so I'll start with the question regarding the climate council's recommendations and um I guess I should clarify the recommendations of the climate council working group which were premised upon some modeling that was conducted for the group and the modeling looked at looked at emissions reductions due to electrification I don't think they looked at hybrids so those high level numbers was primarily focused on pure electrification however one of the strategies that the working group recommended in order to bring about those levels was expansion of the state's existing incentive programs which is currently available to hybrid vehicles and the recommendation was for that program to be expanded and funded but also to continue to fund hybrid vehicles so Barry I'm happy to pause if you want to say anything else about no I think you did a great job thank you Emily so um on TCI I think the question was what are the pros and cons of TCI and I think it's really important to couch any conversation about TCI first in terms of this important caveat which is that it doesn't really exist yet so we don't know exactly what TCI is going to look like it is still very much in development um so with that what I would say about it is that TCI which uh sorry for other folks on the phone this is the transportation and climate initiative it is a regional initiative that as I said is currently underway and that would essentially cap emissions from the transportation sector by selling allowances um which monies would then be allocated amongst the states which brings me to one of the major pros of the program um it would generate potentially a lot of revenue for the state that could be used towards all of these other transportation related solutions that Barry and I have been talking about and which you may have noticed will cost a lot of money some of them in order to implement so that's a major pro is the potential for fund generation in the state but again given the caveat that we don't know exactly what it's going to look like um I think that's really all I could say about it at the time great thank you um Barry a couple questions for you on sort of the the technical pieces of electric vehicle charging um one from Eileen um do miles held by batteries diminish with time for example if you don't drive the miles in a certain day do does the does the battery diminish um and also before we get off when someone is charging out of business do they pay how do they pay for the electricity yeah all right well the first one actually there's there's greater resiliency to these batteries than I think even the industry anticipated so I don't see degradation from lack of from just having it sit uh and not using it as being a huge uh uh issue at least to date um obviously they had to grade over time through usage but letting it sit has been pretty de minimis um as far as um and I mean they do note we do notice some reduction in the cold for sure but that's different than I think what the question is getting at in terms of just leaving leaving the vehicle um without being used and I'm sorry second question was um relating to workplace charging and how to I think we see a variety of models on that I think some employers and even some businesses will let you charge for free um like main autobahn you know go to main autobahn and charge up and you know you get to participate go to the gift shop get some credit cards get your bird seed you know the idea is to use it as an attractor I guess it's kind of like a bird feeder um you know to come in and uh and you know use the use the electricity as a as a means of you know generating business indirect kind of benefits so that's one way we haven't we haven't really seen the maturity of deployment sufficiently to you know provide revenue from provide from billing for the electricity people do it but it's it really depends on the usage levels and many most of the northern New England states the deployment levels have not been very robust certainly COVID has even provided a hit in terms of tourism based you know usage of charging so it's developing but I think most of the a lot of vendors provide it for free great yeah and I know please welcome come on to gills and farm you can wander the grounds as you charge up your car it's a great place to do it um a couple questions about sort of tax policy surrounding some of these vehicles um you know Ernie notes that some some areas might have increased attacks on gas powered cars to subsidize charging stations or other things like that and also sort of the flip side of that is that some states are you know putting surcharges on electric vehicles to make up for the loss and gas tax revenue could you maybe give a quick overview of some of those options around the country or what other states are thinking about and well you want to take a shot at it or you want me to why don't you go ahead um I think that uh this has been an area of interest for a lot of states I think um the use of road tax for example for EVs because they don't pay for gas um which gas you know provides fuel tax um I haven't seen a lot of use of gas fuel tax for providing electric vehicle infrastructure so if you know of a state that's doing that please let me please let me know I'd love to see that policy but I think we are seeing frequently questions about why do EV drivers not have an opportunity to drive to you know why do they have an opportunity to drive without paying their fair share and I think that's definitely something that's on the horizon as the vehicles deploy right now we don't have a a robust enough population of plug-in vehicles to justify the administrative expenses for that type of a of a of a new tax system whether it's a flat fee or some type of road use it's coming I think there's a guilt complex that EV drivers have even now about driving and not contributing to the infrastructure the way they realize that they should and so I don't think it's going to be a huge political issue I think the devil will be in the details for that and I would just add that um funding including some of the tax issues that you've raised were on the table and were sort of passed along as potential recommendations from the transportation working group to the climate council one other point I would just make about taxing gas and diesel for your consideration is that a tax like that is is somewhat concerning until and unless you have helped people to do something other than drive their cars so unless you're ramping up you know your electrification incentives or your transit then it can be problematic to just start tacking on taxes to gas and diesel yeah and EV drivers do pay tax on electricity it's just not going it's just not going to support the infrastructure that they're actually using that's all great um so we're running low on time here but I want to try to squeeze in a few more um Emily are you aware um a question from Kerry here about um how much of the emissions increase from transportation is coming from in-state versus out-of-state drivers uh so I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but the numbers that I gave were for emissions within the state so it would have included tourist drivers but I don't know the split off off hand between tourist drivers and local drivers um but obviously Maine does have a significant uh number of people that comes and visits the state every year and we have to think about their transportation and their transportation choices and options as we think about the state's transportation future excellent well I see it is noon on the dot and so I'm going to stick to our agenda here and stop us now um if you have additional questions for our panelists or some of the questions we didn't get to um if uh Emily and Barry you would be so kind as to put your emails maybe in the chat folks would be able to to reach out afterwards um I really want to thank uh both of you Emily from CLF and Barry from Revision for coming and joining us today this was fantastic this was recorded and we will put it up on our main autobahn website as soon as we can so if you missed pieces of it or there want to revisit then you can join us there um Emily and Barry thank you so much for joining us I hope you have a great week and thank you for the work that you're doing thank you thank you take care take care okay