EGEB: Southern California will get 38K new chargers in 5 years

In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):

• Southern California Edison’s Charge Ready program will install 38,000 chargers over the next five years.
• US clean energy standard benefits would far outweigh the costs, finds a groundbreaking new report.
• UnderstandSolar is a free service that links you to top-rated solar installers in your region for personalized solar estimates. Tesla now offers price matching, so it’s important to shop for the best quotes. Click here to learn more and get your quotes. — *ad.

Southern California chargers

Southern California Edison’s Charge Ready program will install 38,000 chargers over the next five years in its service area of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties, which currently has around 3,000 chargers. It’s a $436 million plan to install EV chargers throughout its 50,000-square-mile service area.

The plan is the current largest utility-led investment in electric vehicle infrastructure in the US.

Around half will be installed in disadvantaged communities, and many will be installed in public parking lots, workplaces, libraries, hospitals, public schools, housing complexes, and other public locations to accommodate people who live in apartments.

Edison International chief executive officer Pedro Pizarro said yesterday of the new plan:

Transportation electrification is the largest near-term opportunity to affordably reduce greenhouse gas emissions and clean our air.

US clean energy standard is a bargain

The Biden administration has called for a 100% carbon-free US power sector by 2035 with an interim target of 80% clean electricity by 2030.

One widely studied policy design to achieve “80×30” is a flexible clean energy standard (CES). A CES would require utilities to achieve annual clean energy milestones. That would create a financial incentive for clean energy while indirectly lowering the value of other types of generation.

A new multi-institutional report from The Clean Energy Futures project at Syracuse University, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Resources for the Future, and the Georgia Institute of Technology is called “An 80×30 Clean Electricity Standard: Carbon, Costs, and Health Benefits.”

[The report] aims to quantify the carbon emissions, costs, and air quality outcomes of contrasting electricity sector policies that are relevant to current national discussions. The results will provide policymakers with rigorous and timely research for decision making.

Or, as Harvard summarizes:

The analysis is the first to map at a county scale the changes in air quality and related health benefits for the lower 48 states.

Here are the key findings of the report:

• Achieving the Biden administration’s clean electricity goal through a CES would have modest costs and large benefits. 
• If a CES were passed through budget reconciliation, many of the costs of the clean energy transition would shift to the federal government and electricity rates would likely fall. 
• Greenhouse gas emissions would fall by 98% from 2005 levels over the same period, resulting in climate benefits through 2050 ($637 billion) outweighing the estimated costs ($342 billion).
• The 80×30 CES would prevent an estimated 317,500 premature deaths between now and 2050 and generate estimated present value health benefits of $1.13 trillion due to cleaner air, bringing the estimated present value net benefits to $1.43 trillion for 2020 to 2050. 
• Air quality improvements are projected to occur for all racial and ethnic groups. 

You can read the full report here.

Photo: Lexus

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