A new analysis says Vermont is not on track to meet its 2025 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with declines in thermal fossil fuel use driven mostly — though not entirely — by warming winters. 

The study, released last month by the Vermont nonprofit Energy Action Network, also shows signs of progress: Though rising temperatures are still the main driver of lower heating fuel sales, weatherization and electric heat pump adoption are starting to have a greater impact.

“Vermont’s efforts… are, ironically, being aided by the very global heating that we are working to do our part to help minimize,” the study says. “Relying on warmer winters to reduce emissions from fossil heating fuel use is not a sustainable strategy. … What [the warming trend] means for temperatures — and therefore fuel use — in any given year is still subject to variation and unpredictability.” 

Like most other New England states, Vermont relies heavily on heating oil and, to a lesser degree, propane and utility gas, to heat buildings. This makes the building sector a close second to transportation in terms of the biggest contributors to planet-warming emissions in Vermont and many of its neighbors. 

Vermont’s statutory climate targets, adopted in 2020, aim to cut these emissions by 26% below 2005 levels by next year, with higher targets in the coming decades.

“It’s technically possible” that Vermont will meet its thermal emissions goal for next year, but “at this point, primarily dependent on how warm or cold the fall and early winter heating season is at the end of 2024,” EAN executive director Jared Duval said. The transportation sector would need to see a nearly unprecedented one-year decline.

On the whole, EAN says it’s “exceedingly unlikely” that Vermont will meet its 2025 goal. 

Warmer winters ‘not the whole story’

EAN found that heat pump adoption and weatherization are not happening fast enough, and what’s more, the current trend sets Vermont up for a Pyrrhic victory at best: Rising temperatures in the upcoming heating season would have to be at least as pronounced as in last year’s record-warm winter in order to reduce fuel use enough to meet the 2025 target for the thermal sector. 

Either way, warming alone won’t get Vermont to its 2030 target of a 40% drop in emissions over 1990 levels, Duval said. The state wants to end up at an 80% reduction by 2050. 

“The only durable way to reduce emissions in line with our science-based commitments is to increase the scale and pace of non-fossil fuel heating solutions and transportation solutions,” he said.

The EAN study found that fuel sales tend to decline alongside heating degree days: a measurement of days when it’s cold enough to kick on the heat. Vermont is seeing fewer of these days overall as temperatures warm. 

“The reduction in fossil heating fuel sales as winters have been warming is not surprising,” Duval said. “Historically, fossil heating fuel use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions have largely tracked with heating demand, with warmer winters corresponding with less fossil fuel use and colder winters with more fossil fuel use. The good news is that’s not the whole story.”

In recent years, he said, fuel sales have begun to “decouple” from the warming trend to which they were once more closely linked. From 2018 to 2023, EAN found that Vermont fuel sales declined 12% while heating degree days only declined 8%. 

“Fossil heating fuel sales are declining even more than you would expect just from warmer winters alone,” Duval said. “And that’s because many non-fossil fuel heating solutions are being adopted.” 

Upgrades needed to accelerate progress

From 2018 to 2022, EAN found, Vermont saw a 34% increase in weatherization projects and more than 50,000 more cold-climate heat pumps installed in homes and businesses, with a 3.3% increase in the number of homes that said they use electricity as their primary heating fuel. 

The upshot: The number of cold days explains 50% of Vermont’s declining fuel use from 2018 to 2023, while heat pump growth explains as much as 28% and other efficient upgrades explain a further 15%. The remaining 7% of the decline couldn’t easily be broken down and could partly be from people shifting to wood heat during periods of high fuel prices, Duval said.

“In order to achieve thermal sector emissions reduction targets without relying primarily on an abnormal amount of winter warming, significantly more displacement and/or replacement of fossil heating fuel… will be necessary,” the study says. Upgrades like heat pumps will lead to more sustainable emissions cuts, it says, “no matter what the weather-dependent heating needs in Vermont will be going forward.” 

EAN is nonpartisan and doesn’t take policy positions, but research analyst Lena Stier said this data suggests that expanding Vermont’s energy workforce and tackling heat pumps and weatherization in tandem would spur faster progress on emissions cuts, while keeping costs low.

EAN based its estimates of fuel use and emissions impacts from heat pumps on the official assumptions of a state-approved technical manual, which Duval said may be overly optimistic. But Stier said the reality could differ.

“We’ve heard anecdotally that a lot of people who have installed heat pumps in their homes… are kind of primarily using them for cooling in the summer,” she said. “So our kind of assumption is that, in reality, it would be a smaller share of that (fossil fuel use) reduction coming from heat pumps.” 

While fuel use declined overall in the study period, he said this came mostly from people using less heating oil specifically — propane sales actually increased in the same period.

Duval noted that propane is cheaper than oil on paper, but actually costs more to use because it generates heat less efficiently than oil does. 

“Once you look at that, then heat pumps become that much more attractive,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated for clarity.

Study: Vermont’s warming winters ‘not the whole story’ for declining fossil fuel use is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

New state incentives are pushing Mainers to adopt “whole-house” heat pump systems, making efficient electricity the primary home heat source and discouraging the secondary use of oil or gas.

Federal tax credits are still available for a wider range of heat pump installations, and the state offers rebates for low-income households to install a heat pump as a supplemental heat source. 

But the latest big rebate for families of any income in Maine, which has become a national leader in heat pump adoption, focuses on using this technology to heat and cool the user’s entire house — or close to it. 

“Customers are then able to turn off their old central furnace or boiler, relegating it to an emergency backup system,” said Michael Stoddard, the executive director of the state’s energy incentives agency, Efficiency Maine, in an email. “When that happens, (heat pumps) are able to meet their full potential.”

The agency’s new whole-house rebate program aims to help meet Maine’s climate goals. First rolled out this fall, the rebate was revised in recent weeks in response to criticism and confusion from contractors over its compliance rules. 

What are whole-house heat pump systems? 

A whole-house heat pump system — also called whole-home, or whole-facility in a space like a school or business — means that heat pumps are the go-to source of heating in the winter, with any supplemental sources used infrequently or as emergency backups.

To receive Efficiency Maine’s new rebate, which covers 40% of project costs up to a $4,000 cap for people of any income or more for those of lower incomes, a heat pump system must be sized to serve at least 80% of the home’s potential heating load, from shoulder seasons to the coldest day of winter.

Eben Perkins, the chief strategy officer with the Maine-based energy consulting firm Competitive Energy Services, said this is just one way of defining a whole-house heat pump in the grand scheme: For example, his company tends to look at how much heat pumps are serving a client out of the whole year, rather than on a day-to-day basis. 

What role do whole-house systems play in Maine’s climate goals?

Maine home heat targets are based on modeling of how many heat pumps and weatherization jobs it would take to offset the state’s top-in-the-nation reliance on heating oil and other use of fossil fuels in buildings, with statutory targets of cutting emissions 45% over 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050.

This sector, which includes schools, businesses and more along with homes and apartments, is second only to transportation in contributing to Maine’s emissions.

This past summer, the state hit an initial target of installing 100,000 heat pumps relative to 2019. Now, it’s working toward another 175,000 more units by 2027. Stoddard said the goal is to see 130,000 homes with one or two heat pump units by 2030, and 115,000 more with whole-house systems. 

“The efficiency levels of heat pumps can be two-X, three-X, four-X technology compared to a combustion system. So one, it’s just a good technology that keeps on getting better,” said Perkins. “Second, it gives you a pathway to actually fully decarbonize the upstream fuel source… That’s the pathway we need to really deeply cut emissions at the state (level).” 

Maine had about 580,000 households in 2022, per the U.S. Census, and about 56% of them use heating oil, according to federal data — slightly lower than in recent years, but still the highest rate in the country. 

The state aims to make its energy usage 100% renewable by 2040. 

Can you use fossil fuels alongside whole-house heat pumps? 

The answer is technically yes, but ideally no, at least under Maine’s new rebate.

As they switch to whole-house heat pumps, eligible customers are asked to turn their oil- or gas-powered furnaces or boilers and connected thermostats off or all the way down, and to cover the systems’ switches. They can still use these systems for hot water heating or in connection with an emergency generator.

This fall, Maine walked back an earlier requirement that old fossil-fired systems be disabled or disconnected from electrical service entirely, with locks on their switches, amid pushback from heat pump installers and fuel oil vendors about reliability and other concerns. 

Despite reverting the rebate to more of an honor system, Stoddard said avoiding supplemental fossil fuel use as completely as possible is key to maximizing heat pump benefits.

“Our research shows that the majority of heat pumps installed in Maine will save significantly less money and emissions when they are operated concurrently with a central furnace or boiler than when they operate alone,” he said. 

The rebate rules suggest “room heaters, a wood stove, or small space heaters,” Stoddard said, to cover up to 20% of the home’s heating load alongside the whole-house heat pump system.

Why does Maine focus on a certain approach to whole-house heat pumps? 

In theory, a whole-home heat pump system could have a range of configurations. But Efficiency Maine focuses its new rebates on heat pumps with one indoor unit per outdoor unit (which they call “single zone,” though contractors say this can have different meanings). These might be the customer’s first heat pumps, or they might add on to older units to make up that 80% heating overall capacity required by the state. 

Dave Ragsdale, the HVAC division manager at Maine-based ReVision Energy, said heat pumps need to be carefully tailored to a home’s needs to maximize their efficiency. 

“You really need to have the… capacity of your heat pump system match the heat load of the house as closely as possible,” he said. “To the extent you oversize a heat pump system, you’re creating a situation where it’s beginning to resemble, more and more, an old-fashioned heating system.” 

Traditional boilers and furnaces, he said, are almost always far oversized to the house’s heating needs — because they can be. “When you have a call for heat in a room, the thermostat tells the boiler, ‘we need heat,’ (and) turns the boiler on. It doesn’t matter how many (units of heat) that boiler is rated for — it’s only going to run for as long as it needs to to get heat to that room to satisfy that thermostat,” Ragsdale said. 

Heat pumps are different, he said: They perform best when they can run pretty much constantly and modulate their output in response to temperature needs. If a heat pump is sized to provide more heat than the house could ever need — or, say, if one outdoor compressor is sized to run heat pump heads in four rooms, though only one or two may be used at a time — it can lead to costly, inefficient “short-cycling.” 

“As soon as (the oversized heat pump) turns on, its capacity is way in excess of the load,” Ragsdale said. “So almost immediately, it floods the room with heat and then turns off, and then the room loses heat, and then it turns on again,” much like a traditional fossil fuel-fired system.

Ragsdale said this need for fine-tuning is why Maine’s rebate focuses on those one-indoor, one-outdoor, “single-zone” units — and why he suggests customers choose whole-house systems that meet just a tiny bit less than their home’s peak hypothetical heating load, ideally 99% or 99.6% of it. 

“That little adjustment is enough to bring the capacity of your system more in line with what you’re actually going to see throughout the course of the heating season,” Ragsdale said. 

If pushed to 100%, the system would be overpowered almost every day of the year, reducing efficiency and driving up costs. In the 99% design, the whole-house system is more efficient year-round and can use its supplemental sources to take the edge off and improve performance in the coldest weather conditions. 

Are whole-house heat pump systems right for every house? 

Getting the most out of a whole-house system requires careful customer education and for contractors to assess a home’s energy needs in great detail, Ragsdale said. Assessing air leaks and insulation needs with an energy audit can be a key part of this process. Ultimately, he sees houses with a more open floor plan and excellent weatherization as the best candidates for a cost-effective whole-house system.

“One thing is crystal clear… this whole-house model is not going to be applicable to every house you come across,” he said. “If there’s a house that’s broken up into a lot of small rooms, it’s probably going to be difficult to make a (whole-house) heat pump system work really well there.” 

The same goes for using existing ducts from a forced hot-air system to run heat pumps, accompanied by an air handler. Those ducts will need new insulation to safely carry cold air in the summer, which is a complex retrofit for an existing house. Even at best, Ragsdale said, “you’re losing a fair amount of (heat) in the distribution” relative to a ductless heat pump delivering its hot air more directly. 

But for people who may be unsure or ill-suited for the whole-house switch, Ragsdale emphasized that other heat pump configurations can still help vastly reduce fossil fuel use and costs, especially with state and federal incentives.

“Heat pumps still make sense, even a house that doesn’t have the perfect layout,” he said. 

He gave his own home as an example. It was built in the 1940s, with lots of small rooms. 

“I put one (heat pump unit) in my living room, which is the single biggest room, so I’m taking a big chunk out of my heat load even before I stop using my boiler altogether,” he said. “Most of that heat, frankly, in the shoulder seasons, managed to get its way around the house enough so that I was perfectly comfortable. 

“Only in a couple weeks out of the winter,” he said, “did I have to turn that boiler on to … take the chill off.”

Maine turns its heat pump focus to ‘whole-house’ systems that can all but eliminate fossil fuel use is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals. 

The operator of New England’s power grid should establish a new position to engage with low-income and minority communities unfairly burdened by pollution, five Northeast states said last week.

Such a role could serve as a “critical bridge” between ISO New England and the communities it serves as the Northeast looks to transition to cleaner energy resources, officials from Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine and Connecticut said in a letter to the nonprofit grid operator. ISO New England oversees the flow of power in those states and in New Hampshire.

The independent system operator, or ISO, would be the first regional grid operator to establish an executive-level position focused on environmental justice, or the notion that no one should be subject to disproportionate and excessive pollution. The role could be carved out in the grid operator’s budget plan, according to the letter.

“We encourage ISO-NE to be first in this critical area,” state officials said in their letter.

As it evaluates the states’ request, ISO New England has added a “placeholder” in its 2024 budget proposal for an environmental justice position, grid operator spokesperson Mary Cate Mannion said in an email Friday. The grid operator, whose mission is primarily to ensure electric reliability, is eager to continue discussing environmental justice issues with the states, Mannion added.

“The ISO has been actively engaged in developing cost-effective and efficient solutions to ensure a clean and reliable energy future and [is] currently working on several initiatives to facilitate wholesale market participation and delivery of clean energy across the region,” Mannion said in an email.

While ISO New England does not permit or site energy infrastructure, it plays a role in planning where new transmission projects are developed. It also sets rules geared toward promoting reliable and affordable electricity that can influence what types of energy resources are built.

A senior environmental justice official at ISO New England could advise the organization’s board of directors on how its own rules and policies affect historically disadvantaged communities, the states said. The position could also help build relationships with those communities, officials suggested.

“As community engagement and responsibilities grow, this executive position could build out and manage additional team members providing EJ expertise to ISO-NE and enhancing community, government, and industry engagement,” state officials continued.

Signers of the letter include James Van Nostrand, chair of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities; Anthony Roisman, chair of the Vermont Public Utility Commission; Katie Dykes, commissioner at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection; Christopher Kearns, acting commissioner in the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources; and Phil Bartlett, chair of the Maine Public Utilities Commission.

Phelps Turner, a senior attorney at the Maine-based Conservation Law Foundation, said that adding an environmental justice perspective to ISO New England’s senior leadership could have implications for electricity costs and the future energy resource mix.

Last year, 45 percent of the energy produced for electricity in the regional grid came from natural gas, according to the grid operator. All of the states signing the letter want to significantly expand renewable energy in New England and reduce the use of fossil fuels for electricity.

“Disproportionate air quality, environmental and human health impacts on low-income communities and communities of color often stem from our over-reliance in the region on fossil fuel-powered generation,” said Turner, who supports the states’ request for an environmental justice role.

“When the market design, as it has, favors fossil fuel generation and fails to create a level playing field for renewable generation, there are negative air quality impacts and resulting negative human health impacts on [nearby] populations,” Turner said.

ISO New England says it is committed to working with the states to meet their clean energy goals and integrate more solar and wind into the energy resource mix. It has also agreed to work with New England states in a joint effort with New Jersey and New York to identify transmission solutions for offshore wind projects.

Northeast grid operator weighs first environmental justice position is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

In the ongoing negotiations over how best to strengthen Connecticut’s 15-year-old environmental justice law, one debate revolves around two words: may vs. shall. 

A bill backed by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, or DEEP, would give that agency, as well as the Connecticut Siting Council, the authority to deny or place conditions on a permit for polluting facilities in environmental justice communities if the cumulative environmental and health impacts there exceed a threshold higher than impacts borne by other communities.

Or, in short, the agency “may” deny or place conditions on a permit in such situations. Neither authority may consider cumulative impacts when issuing permits under existing law.

Environmental advocates like Rep. Geraldo Reyes Jr. (D-Waterbury), who lives in that city’s heavily impacted South End, welcome the bill and argue it should go a step further. They want the “may” changed to a “shall.”

Reyes said communities like his suffer high asthma rates and other health impacts because of the injustices done in the past. And he wants Connecticut political leaders to stop talking about their support for environmental justice and take meaningful action.

“I’ve been fighting for Connecticut to be a leader in environmental justice,” he said. “I want the strongest language possible. We can be the model.”

Reyes sits on the Environment Committee, which last week passed the “may” version of the bill with bipartisan support. In addition to granting DEEP and the council greater authority to deny certain permits in distressed municipalities, the bill expands the kinds of facilities that must comply, and adds accountability measures.

Committee co-chair Sen. Rick Lopes (D-Berlin, Farmington, New Britain), who is the Senate deputy majority leader, made it clear that negotiations over the language would continue before the measure is put out for a floor vote.

That’s because while Reyes and dozens of citizens who submitted written testimony want stronger language, several lawmakers on the committee said they are concerned the bill goes too far. They said adding to the list of requirements for permitting in environmental justice communities might deter some existing companies from making positive improvements.

“You could have a facility that would have to go to the siting council for a permit to improve their facility that could, in fact, be environmentally beneficial,” said Sen. Stephen Harding, a Republican ranking member of the committee, in an interview. “I just want to make sure that the obstacles being put in place, some of which are good, are not getting in the way of or disincentivizing facilities from improving.”

Harding said he’d like to see an expedited permitting process for projects that are going to improve environmental quality.

More projects would face scrutiny

Some also expressed concerns that the bill expands the list of “affecting facilities” that trigger the law. It seeks requirements for those seeking a permit to discharge wastewater from a combined sewer system that transports both stormwater and sewage. Those systems currently exist in Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and Norwich, all environmental justice communities, according to DEEP. 

It also adds solid waste transfer stations, resource recovery facilities, chemical recycling facilities, and fossil fuel terminals.

The existing list of affecting facilities includes, among others, electric generating facilities with a capacity over 10 MW, sludge and solid waste incinerators and combustors, and medical waste incinerators.

Asked about the objections, DEEP spokesperson Paul Copleman said the agency stands by the bill. 

“Both the public benefits and the burdens” associated with these operations “should be borne equitably,” he said. “Consequently, the expansion of any of these facilities or the construction of new ones in or near environmental justice communities should consider the cumulative environmental and public health stressors that residents of host communities will bear, and mitigation of those stressors, where possible.”

The bill requires applicants for a new or expanded permit, or siting approval, to first file an assessment of potential “environmental and public health stressors” associated with the project. DEEP would write regulations outlining the method for measuring and identifying those stressors.

Applicants are already required to file a plan for facilitating “meaningful public participation” in the regulatory process. The bill calls for submission of a subsequent participation report that includes all written comments received from the public, responses to any concerns or questions, and a video of the required public meeting.

‘Nothing stopping them’ from building elsewhere

The Connecticut Business and Industry Association opposes the measure, saying in written testimony that the bill amounts to “just another bureaucratic barrier for many industries.” 

But Reyes, who has a long background in manufacturing, rejects that argument, saying businesses can avoid the more stringent requirements by putting their facility elsewhere. 

“I believe there are very powerful companies and lobbyists that don’t want to see this type of language because they want to continue the practices that have made them money over time,” he said. “But at the end of the day, there is nothing stopping them from putting anything in a community that is not an environmental justice community.”

He credited DEEP with working diligently with environmental justice advocates this year on the bill — something that has not been the case in the past, he said.

Alex Rodriguez, environmental justice specialist for Save the Sound, a strong supporter of the bill, said he understands some of the concerns around mandating the denial of permits for affecting facilities in overly stressed environmental justice communities. But if “we’re at the end of the line in negotiating ‘may’ to ‘shall,’” Rodriguez said, lawmakers should at the very least keep the existing language.

“That’s where I draw the line,” he said. “It’s on DEEP now to bring in the potentially affected parties to discuss a path forward. We are very close to an important new statute here.”

Copleman said the agency is “eager” to work with lawmakers on the bill. However, he said, “we believe that these concerns can be addressed without removing the language giving DEEP the authority to consider cumulative impacts.”

Far from deterring environmentally beneficial improvements, the bill creates the opportunity to “maximize the environmental benefits” of an expanded or new facility, he said.

Twenty-five communities around the state qualify as environmental justice communities, under the statutory definition. They are host to 10 of the state’s 22 electricity generating facilities, four of six sewage sludge incinerators, two of four solid waste incinerators, the state’s only ash landfill, and most of the state’s bulk petroleum product storage and distribution facilities, according to DEEP. 

Waterbury’s South End has six affecting facilities, including a garbage operation that was allowed to expand five years ago despite strong community opposition. 

“You name it, we have it down here in the South End,” Reyes said. “I guess one day I woke up and said, my God, when is it enough?”

Connecticut bill would raise bar for permitting facilities in already polluted areas is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

While the Northeast is ramping up efforts to electrify the diesel-powered truck fleets that rumble through its major freight corridors, the region lacks a vision for what the increased electricity demand will mean for the grid and vehicle charging infrastructure. 

A new study headed up by National Grid, the utility company, aims to lay out a clear path forward. 

Brian Wilkie, National Grid’s director of transportation electrification in New York, said the two-year study will pinpoint future critical charging locations along highways in nine Northeast states, and advise as to where major transmission upgrades will be needed. 

The study is pulling together transportation planning and electric transmission distribution planning expertise, “two sectors of the economy that never really talk to each other,” Wilkie said.

A multi-state approach

It’s clear that future power demands along the highways will be significant. A study released last year by National Grid projected power demand growth across 71 highway charging sites in New York and Massachusetts. It determined that as soon as 2030, more than a quarter of those sites will require a level of charging capacity equal to the demand of an outdoor professional sports stadium. 

And by 2045, some of the most high-demand locations will require charging capacity equivalent to the electric load of a major industrial site.

The upgrades required, including high-voltage, transmission-level interconnections, will be costly and take four to eight years to complete, the report concluded. 

The expanded study will cover Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. While that swath of land extends well beyond National Grid’s service territory, “if you don’t have a more regional view, you fail to study it properly and you don’t allow for the type of cooperation that is required across state borders,” Wilkie said. “The transportation sector doesn’t honor state lines.” 

The study is being funded with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which announced the award last month as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to accelerate the creation of zero-emission vehicle corridors across the country.

The project “is extremely well-timed,” said Sarah McKearnan, senior manager for clean transportation at Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, known as NESCAUM, a nonprofit association of state air quality agencies and a participant in the study. 

“Over the next five years, states will have access to very significant levels of federal funding to expand public charging stations,” she said. “This project will provide essential input that Northeast states can use to guide decisions about how to spend that funding.” 

NESCAUM facilitates a zero-emission vehicle task force that last year released a multi-state action plan for electrifying medium- to heavy-duty vehicles. The plan highlights the need for state and utility coordination to plan for grid transmission and distribution capacity, something the National Grid study will help lay the groundwork for. 

Big rigs and big data

Zero-emission trucks are expected to expand rapidly throughout the region in coming years, not least because all of the states in the study group except New Hampshire are signatories to a memorandum of understanding promising to work together to foster widespread electrification of those vehicles. 

In addition, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey have adopted California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which requires truck makers to sell an increasing number of zero-emission vehicles beginning with model year 2025.

The trucking industry is preparing for that transition, but they also understand that they won’t be able to sell zero-emission trucks at scale if the infrastructure isn’t in place to support them, said Diego Quevedo, utilities lead in Daimler Truck North America’s infrastructure and consulting department for zero-emission vehicles. 

Daimler Truck North America, the country’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturer and a participant in the National Grid study, began studying the feasibility of zero-emission vehicles in 2017. Their goal is to have a zero-emission vehicle offering in every lineup that they sell by 2039, in order to transition all customer fleets to zero-emission by 2050, Quevedo said. 

The company has about 40% of the country’s market share in Class 6 through 8 trucks, “anywhere from your really big U-Haul box trucks all the way to the semi-tractor trailers you see on the highway,” he said. 

What they bring to the National Grid study is data. They use a software system that pings GPS coordinates from their Class 8 vehicles out in the field — some 230,000-250,000 tractors nationwide. The data is aggregated and anonymized so there is no specific customer information.

“You can look at where these vehicles operate, where they are stopping, how long they stop, how far they travel before they stop,” Quevedo said. “Assuming that those vehicles in the future are battery electric, you can determine what the future load requirements will be to replenish those electric miles that they’re traveling. It can give utilities very good insight into the future hotspots for load.”

David Mullaney, a principal at RMI’s carbon-free transportation team and a core participant in the study, said they will be looking at truck traffic through existing highway truck stops, as well as the ports of New York and New Jersey.

“But we don’t look at every truck stop out there,” said Mullaney, who has done similar modeling studies elsewhere in the U.S. and co-authored the earlier National Grid study. “We are preliminarily looking at places with proximity to big electrical infrastructure, where it is cost-effective to bring more electricity to.”

Targeting high-traffic sites that can connect to the transmission system more easily will allow charging infrastructure to be scaled more quickly and result in “no-regrets” investments, McKearnan said.

Who pays?

Perhaps the biggest challenge in getting all this done is figuring out how to pay for it. Utilities typically spread the cost of infrastructure investments across their ratepayer base, with regulator approval. But in this case, “it would be deeply unfair to put it on the average ratepayer,” Mullaney said. 

Federal and state governments may need to think more broadly about who is benefiting from these investments, and spread the costs around accordingly, he said. For example, trucking companies who longer have to pay for diesel, truck stops that are selling more products because trucks stop there to charge, and the public, whose health benefits from cleaner air. 

“We have to look at high diversification of revenue streams,” he said. 

Wilkie agrees that it will require more creative thinking about how to allocate the cost of this infrastructure. One idea is highway toll stratification, in which electric trucks pay higher tolls to offset some of the costs. 

“We’re going to have to change the paradigm a bit,” he said. “But we can’t let that conversation stop us from taking action.”

Electric trucks are coming. Will the Northeast’s grid be ready for them? is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.