COLUMBUS – The City of Columbus has taken steps to address a growing challenge facing cities across the country to provide residents of rental properties with safe and reliable methods for charging electric vehicles.
The great transition to electric vehicles is underway for single-family homeowners who can charge their cars at home, but for millions of renters, access to charging remains a significant barrier.
Cities from Portland to Los Angeles to New York City are trying to come up with innovative public charging solutions as drivers string power cords across sidewalks, stand up their own private charging stations on city rights-of-way and line up at public facilities.
Columbus City Council earlier this year passed legislation that requires that builders of new residential buildings and parking lots provide a percentage of available spaces with EV charging capabilities, but those regulations will not take effect for over a year according to Anthony Celebrezze III, deputy director of the Department of Building and Zoning Services.
“Being that Columbus is a majority renter city, we needed to do something to ensure that the folks that chose to go down the path of purchasing an electronic car could have access to charging stations,” he said.
The requirement to include EV charging spaces begins in January 2024 on new projects only to allow the builders time to find materials and adopt the changes into future projects, Celebrezze said.
Neighborhoods zoned for most residential categories will require that 2% of available parking be equipped with EV charging facilities with that number increasing to 5% by 2028, Celebrezze said.
The facilities will also have to include “EV capable” space, where a conduit has been installed for future additions, Celebrezze said.
The Department of Public Service intends to begin developing a comprehensive Electric Vehicle public charging program in the coming months that will include plans to “ensure publicly accessible and equitable charging is provided in neighborhoods where multifamily and single-family residences don’t have access to private off-street parking,” department public relations specialist Debbie Briner said.
This effort is designed to help foster increased EV adoption to help meet Columbus Climate Action Plan greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals, Briner said.
The Biden administration last month approved plans from all 50 states to roll out a network of high-speed chargers along interstate highways coast-to-coast using $5 billion in federal funding over the next five years.
But states must wait to apply for an additional $2.5 billion in local grants to fill in charging gaps, including in low- and moderate-income areas of cities and in neighborhoods with limited private parking.
A briefing prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy last year by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory forecasts a total of just under 19 million electric vehicles on the nation’s roads by 2030, with a projected need for an extra 9.6 million charging stations to meet that demand.