By Bill Beren • Transportation Committee Chair
Drive Electric Earth Day: Gateway, Skylands, and Loantaka groups either organized or participated in the Drive Electric Earth Day program in April where owners of electric vehicles (EVs) brought their cars to promote clean transportation. Gateway’s event at Montclair included 25 vehicles ranging from high-end BMWs and a Polestar to Chevy Bolts and Kias, an electric school bus, and a trailer full of ebikes. Over 100 people came by to talk to the owners. The bad news is that GM has announced that it is discontinuing production of the Chevy Bolt to concentrate its efforts on building electric SUVs, as the profit margin is higher for those vehicles.
The NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) reports that as of December 2022, there were 91,515 EVs registered in New Jersey (including both battery electric and plug-in hybrids), up from just 338 ten years earlier! A generous set of financial incentives has helped stimulate demand for these vehicles, so much so that the state had to close its 2022-2023 incentive program early due to high demand that exceeded its budget. It is expected that funds will be available once again in July with the new fiscal year budget. A list of all the available grants and incentives is summarized in our NJ Chapter flyer on state and federal incentives for electric passenger vehicles. This document will be updated as the incentives change, so check it online when you begin your search to buy or lease an EV. The state has also announced a program, relying on federal grant money under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), to roll out electric charging stations along the major transportation corridors in the state, including its interstate highways and the Garden State Parkway.
Electric School Buses: The Transportation Committee continues to actively promote the replacement of the state’s fleet of diesel school buses with zero emission electric school buses. We know of two private school bus fleets that have these in operation—Student Transportation of America has five buses running in Lawrence Township, and Belair Transport in the Oranges is in the process of putting all seven of their buses on the road. Jersey City School District’s fleet of five buses is also in the final stages of deployment.
This is a small percentage of the 77 buses originally funded between February 2019 and October 2021. We are therefore concerned that the state grant process that funds these buses needs to be streamlined. In concert with the Clean Cities Coalition, we are researching how to speed up the process and hope to work with the DEP to eliminate the speed bumps. Grants for an additional 124 buses were announced in August 2022 and March 2023.
This spring, the Sierra Club will promote new funding cycles by both the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under President Biden’s IIJA, and NJDEP under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the state’s new Electric School Bus Program, which was largely written by the Transportation Committee and signed by the governor in August. New Jersey will split $37 million dollars in federal grant funds allocated to EPA Region 2 with New York and Puerto Rico. We will also sponsor events in Atlantic City (June 12 at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority facility), Asbury Park (June 7 at the Asbury Park Library) and Jersey City (June 21 at Lincoln Park) to publicize the federal and state grant programs to local school districts.
In addition to electric school buses, the state is also using RGGI funds to pay for electric garbage trucks, fire engines, airport and port equipment, NJ Transit buses, and other heavy and medium duty vehicles and support equipment. More information on electric school buses can be found on our electric school bus webpage.
New Jersey Transit Issues: NJ Transit is slowly making progress toward electrifying its fleet of buses. One electric bus is now in passenger service in Camden County, to be followed by seven others. The agency received federal grant money to build a new bus depot in Hudson County that will support a fleet of electric buses. However, no progress has been announced by the agency regarding its plans to redesign the bus routes in Essex and Hudson counties, or in South Jersey.
Advanced Clean Truck and Advanced Clean Cars II: The Sierra Club is lobbying for the state to apply the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, starting in 2025, and adopt Advanced Clean Cars II. These two California vehicle standards would help electrify the transportation sector, which generates 40% of the state’s greenhouse gases. These standards were developed by the California Air Resources Board and require an increasingly larger percentage of EV sales for cars, trucks, and buses between now and 2035.
Resources
Flyer on EV incentives: bit.ly/3NxuCIH
NJ Chapter webpage on E-school bus funding and incentives: bit.ly/3Lu0YkT