California needs to charge electric vehicles during day, not night, to save grid, study says
California needs to charge electric vehicles during day, not night, to save grid, study says
By
Brian Merchant
| Mar 18, 2017 7:00 am GMT
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California needs to charge electric vehicles during day, not night, to save grid, study says
California needs to charge electric vehicles during day, not night, to save grid, study says California needs to charge electric vehicles during day, not night, to save grid, study says
If California is going to reach its goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2040 and of reducing transportation’s contribution as much as 50 percent by 2025, to reach that it will have to make electric vehicles cheaper, faster and available in more places, said James W. Sowa, a UCLA professor who studies the economics of clean energy.
That won’t happen overnight, but it does require a “fundamental shift” in how we think about how we drive our cars, said Sowa, who co-directs UCLA’s Center for Sustainable Energy.
The change won’t happen in one day or one month, he said. “It will be a change that’s gradual and probably a series of small but substantial changes.”
“If we have to get to 100 percent by 2025, then electric vehicles will have to compete with gasoline powered vehicles on the same stage of market penetration,” he said.
On that point, California’s electric vehicle market is now competitive. So are vehicles that use plug-in hybrids.
On the other hand, California is the only major American jurisdiction that requires new vehicles to run on conventional gasoline, while selling the same vehicles at $250 or less.
So you have a choice, Sowa said. You can be a state that has a vibrant electric vehicle market, or you can have a market that doesn’t.
The federal government has been on its own course in this regard for the past half decade, Sowa said.
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