Sharifi says that she was not the only tenant in her building, located in Toronto’s east end, to make such a request. Other EV owners submitted similar pleas and all were told that the board had other priorities.

They are far from alone in their frustration at the lack of accessible, on-site chargers for people living in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs). Insufficient on-site charging in MURBs has become a significant gap in the EV ecosystem. Currently, 72% of EV charging in Canada occurs at home. Workplace and public charging stations make up the balance.

But as more Canadians replace their gas car with an electric one – 65,733 new zero-emission vehicles were registered as of the second quarter of 2024, an increase of 37.9% from the same period last year – the clamour for chargers located in apartment and condo parking stalls will only get louder.

Louise Lévesque, senior policy director with Electric Mobility Canada (EMC), says that the anticipated rise in requests for on-site charging facilities has now arrived. “We’re there, and we need to address this,” Lévesque says, although she acknowledges a recent uptick in charging infrastructure installation in the condominium sector, which she attributes to tenant advocacy.

It’s unequal. If you’re living in an apartment building, you can’t benefit from the economics of driving an EV just because you can’t install a charging station.

– Louise Lévesque, senior policy director with Electric Mobility Canada

Even so, Lévesque says, efforts to make residential buildings “EV-ready” – equipped to handle a higher electrical load and with circuitry in place to hook up to chargers – are not moving fast enough. EMC submitted recommendations to the federal government two years ago advising that one million MURBs be EV-ready within the next five years. Canada will not come close to reaching that target.

Access to EV charging is an equity issue

As many as one in three Canadians lives in a condo or apartment rental; in urban centres, the share is much higher, reaching 60% in the Montreal and Vancouver metropolitan areas. Americans are in a comparable position: nearly a quarter of all housing structures in the United States have more than one dwelling unit.

Noting that in the United States some 50% to 80% of all battery-electric car-charging sessions take place at home, Eleftheria Kontou, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois, argues that “the current limited access to home charging in many cities constrains electric vehicle adoption, slows down the decarbonization of U.S. transportation and exacerbates inequities in electric vehicle ownership.”

Related

Low-cost EVs on ‘verge of extinction’ as Canada slaps 100% tariff on Chinese cars

Who’s trying to kill the $17,000 electric car?

Right-to-charge laws can help fill the gap in EV charging stations. Now what?

According to a report by Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors, EV uptake is concentrated among more affluent people. Access to charging in multifamily buildings is an equity issue, the report’s authors write, given the greater prevalence of low-income and racialized people in multifamily buildings relative to single-family homes.

Lévesque echoes that finding, adding that EV adoption rates will continue to track upward over the next few years but that the buyers will be predominantly homeowners. “I think that’s sad,” she says. “It’s unequal. If you’re living in an apartment building, you can’t benefit from the economics of driving an EV just because you can’t install a charging station.”

Lévesque says that municipalities and the charging industry are getting creative in response to residents’ need for easy access to chargers, such as locating charging hubs in parking lots close to high-rise clusters.

Better days ahead for EV charging infrastructure

Property owners and condo boards often cite cost and electrical systems that can’t handle the additional load from EVs as the biggest obstacles to investing in charging equipment. Power sharing, where multiple cars can share a single circuit, can help ease the energy burden, Lévesque says. Government subsidies are also available to retrofit buildings so that they are EV-ready, although provincial support is wildly inconsistent from one jurisdiction to the next.

Still, progress is evident in places such as the City of Vancouver, which raised the percentage of EV-ready parking stalls required in new MURBs from 20% to 100% in 2018. Three years later, Vancouver launched an incentive program to accelerate EV-ready retrofits in existing rental buildings.

The City of Toronto requires that 100% of residential parking in new construction and 20% to 50% of non-residential parking be EV-ready.

As for recalcitrant condo boards, a new movement is underway called “the right to charge.” If adopted as legislation, the right to charge means that boards and property owners can be compelled to make their buildings EV-ready. For example, in the State of Illinois, the new Electric Vehicle Charging Act requires that 100% of parking spaces at multi-unit dwellings be ready for EV charging, with a conduit and reserved power capacity to easily install charging stations. The new law also gives renters and condo owners in new buildings a right to install chargers without unreasonable restriction from landlords and homeowner associations.

According to the Dunsky report, installing charging infrastructure adds an increasingly sought-after amenity that can make a building more valuable. Lévesque agrees: “If you’re selling your condo and you can tell a future buyer that your parking spot is EV-ready or has a charging station, that adds value,” she says. “More and more people will be interested in not having the hassle of getting all that installed and going through the whole process of getting approvals – it’s all done already.”

Sharifi no longer needs to charge her EV at the shopping mall closest to her condo: she installed a charger when she moved into her townhouse last August. And despite the board’s refusal to budge on the issue, Sharifi does not suffer buyer’s remorse. “I save thousands of dollars a year on gas,” she reports. “In all this time, I’ve never had an oil change or needed maintenance work.” 

Sharifi also believes that the board will eventually come around. “There are a lot of new buildings going up in that neighbourhood. All of them offer an EV-ready parking stall. They’re going to have to do this.”

Victoria Foote is a writer and editor who specializes in clean energy and climate.

The post Lack of charging stations in high-rise buildings is cutting off access to EVs appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Several states and cities, aiming to expand EV use, are now trying to lift that barrier to ownership with “right to charge” laws.

Illinois’ governor signed the latest right-to-charge law in June 2023, requiring that all parking spots at new homes and multiunit dwellings be wired so they’re ready for EV chargers to be installed. Colorado, Florida, New York and other states have passed similar laws in recent years.

But having wiring in place for charging is only the first step to expanding EV use. Apartment building managers, condo associations and residents are now trying to figure out how to make charging efficient, affordable and available to everyone who needs it when they need it.

Electric cars can benefit urban dwellers

As a civil engineer who focuses on transportation, I study ways to make the shift to electric vehicles equitable, and I believe that planning for multiunit dwelling charging and accessibility is smart policy for cities.

Transitioning away from fossil-fueled vehicles to electric vehicles has benefits for the environment and the health of urban residents. It reduces tailpipe emissions, which can cause respiratory problems and warm the climate; it mitigates noise; and it improves urban air quality and quality of life.

Surveys show most EV drivers charge at home, where electricity rates are lower than at public chargers and there is less competition for charging spots. In California, the leading state for EVs, 88% of early adopters of battery electric cars said they were able to charge at home, and workplace and public charging represented just 24% and 17% of their charging sessions, respectively. Nationwide, about 50% to 80% of all battery electric car charging sessions take place at home.

Yet almost a quarter of all U.S. housing structures have more than one dwelling unit, according to the 2019 American Housing Survey. In California, 32.5% of urban dwellings have multiple units, and only a third of those units include access to a personal garage where a charger could be installed.

Even if installing a personal charger is an option, it can be expensive in a multiunit dwelling if wiring isn’t already in place. And it often comes with other obstacles, including the potential need for electrical upgrades or challenges from homeowner association rules and restrictions. Installing chargers can involve numerous stakeholders who can impede the process – lot owners, tenants, homeowners associations, property managers, electric utilities and local governments.

However, if a 240-volt outlet is already available, basic charger installation drops to a few hundred dollars.

Right-to-charge laws aims for ubiquitous home charging

Right-to-charge laws aim to streamline home charging access as new buildings go up.

Illinois’ new Electric Vehicle Charging Act requires that 100% of parking spaces at new homes and multiunit dwellings be ready for electric car charging, with a conduit and reserved capacity to easily install charging infrastructure. The new law also gives renters and condominium owners in new buildings a right to install chargers without unreasonable restriction from landlords and homeowner associations.

California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Virginia also have right-to-charge laws designed to make residential community charging deployment easier, as do several U.S. cities including Seattle and Washington, D.C. Most apply only to owner-occupied buildings, but a few, including California’s and Colorado’s, also apply to rental buildings.

Chicago officials have considered an ordinance that would include existing buildings, too.

Sharing chargers can reduce the cost

There are several steps communities can take to increase access to chargers and reduce the cost to residents.

In a new study, colleagues and I looked at how to design shared charging for an apartment building with scheduling that works for everyone. By sharing chargers, residential communities can reduce the costs associated with charger installation and use.

The biggest challenge to shared charging is often scheduling. We found that a centralized charging management system that suggests charging times for each electric car owner that aligns with the owner’s travel schedule and the amount of charge needed can work – with enough chargers.

In a typical multiunit dwelling in Chicago – with an average of 14 cars in the parking lot – a small community charging hub with two level 2 chargers, the type common in homes and office buildings, can cover daily residential recharging demand at a cost of about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour. But having only two chargers means residents are waiting on average 2.2 hours to charge.

A larger charging hub with eight level 2 chargers in the same city avoids the delay but increases the cost of charging to 21 cents per kWh because of upfront cost of purchasing and installing the chargers. To put that into context, the average electricity cost for Chicago residents is 16 cents per kWh.

The future of charging management at multiunit dwellings will be automated for efficiency, with a computer or artificial intelligence determining the most efficient schedule for charging. Optimized scheduling can be responsive to the times renewable electricity generation sources are producing the most power – midday for solar energy, for example – and to dynamic electricity pricing. Automation can also eliminate delays for drivers while saving money and reducing the burden on the electric grid.

The current limited access to home charging in many cities constrains electric vehicle adoption, slows down the decarbonization of U.S. transportation and exacerbates inequities in electric vehicle ownership. I believe efforts to expand charging in multidwelling buildings can help lift some of the biggest barriers and help reduce noise and pollution in urban cores at the same time.

Eleftheria Kontou, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Right-to-charge laws can help fill the gap in EV charging stations. Now what? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In an online roundtable Wednesday, a chorus of policy experts urged the federal government to undertake a 10-year, multibillion-dollar effort to electrify the transport sector as part of its effort to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases.

Transportation – including passenger vehicles, commercial trucks, planes and trains – accounts for 25% of Canada’s emissions. Emissions from the sector have grown by 53% since 1990.

“We have to tackle this sector if you’re going to get to the net-zero target,” moderator Diana Fox Carney said at a session hosted by Corporate Knights magazine as part of its seven-part Building Back Better event series. “Canada is perhaps lagging some other countries in this regard,” with lower penetration of electric vehicles, the lack of manufacturing of EVs and a lack of forward thinking on mass transit, she noted.

Other analysts, including the International Energy Agency, have noted that Canada’s passenger fleet has one of the worst fuel-efficiency ratings because of lower gasoline prices, long distances and a preference for gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups.

The federal government has pledged to pursue a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 ­– a target that requires a massive effort to virtually eliminate the use of fossil fuels in industry, transportation and heating buildings. (Any remaining emissions from continued fossil-fuel use would be offset through natural and technological means of removing carbon from the atmosphere.)

To rev up progress toward the net-zero goal, Corporate Knights is encouraging the Liberal government to launch a massive clean-energy stimulus program as it looks to revive an economy that has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several environmental organizations have also echoed the advice of the International Energy Agency that governments should concentrate stimulus spending on clean-energy initiatives to speed up the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Governments need to introduce policies that expand the demand for and the supply of electric cars, but also electric and hydrogen-powered freight vehicles, which account for 42% of transportation emissions, said Carolyn Kim, Ontario regional director for the Pembina Institute.

A table-setting white paper prepared by Ralph Torrie of Torrie Smith Associations and Céline Bak of Analytica Advisors said that a $24 billion clean-transportation investment over 10 years would save drivers $57 billion at the gas pump while generating the equivalent of 17,700 full-time jobs a year and slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 96 million tonnes over the decade.

Included in the proposal is a one-year, $6-billion plan to provide free transit ridership. The program would encourage commuters to return to mass transit after the practice of social-distancing ends. It would also target poorer Canadians who rely on public systems.

“With COVID-19, there is a risk that people who have used transit will revert to cars,” Bak said in an email after the webinar. Underwriting those systems “ensures that public transit authorities are not weakened by COVID-19 and that the GHG impact of COVID-19 is minimized while putting money directly into the pockets of many people,” she added.

The plan also proposes to “electrify” the Trans-Canada Highway with a network of fast-charging stations that can recharge a vehicle battery in five minutes. And it urges Ottawa to help finance the purchase of electric vehicles, especially for fleet owners who currently face higher financing charges for EVs than they do for traditional gas- or diesel-fuelled vehicles.

While there are incentives and policies designed to encourage people to purchase EVs, governments must also act to ensure Canada capitalizes on the opportunities that arise from the transition, said Amarjeet Sohi, a former Liberal cabinet minister. That includes areas such as supplying the metals and minerals required for batteries and wires, expanding the country’s existing presence in the manufacturing of low-carbon trucks and buses, and attracting investment from the global auto sector for the new electric models and their parts.

Decisions on where to locate EV assembly plants are being made outside Canada, and that leaves this country at a disadvantage, said Jerry Dias, president of the Unifor union. Unifor represents thousands of manufacturing workers, mainly in the auto industry that is based in Southern Ontario.

As global automakers expand their offerings of EVs and hybrids, only a small handful of those models are earmarked for Canadian plants, Dias noted. Parts manufacturers are at risk because EVs have far fewer components – no transmissions, radiators or exhaust systems. “We need to move and we need to move quickly” on an industrial strategy, Dias said. “I’m concerned we’ve been slow at getting into the game and we have a lot of ground to make up.”

One area in which Canada has carved out a niche is the development of electric buses, run on either plug-in batteries or hydrogen fuel cells that power an electric engine.

Investments in charging infrastructure will support further expansion of battery- and hydrogen-powered buses, trucks and trains, said Josipa Petrunic, president of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium.

Shawn McCarthy writes on sustainable finance and climate for Corporate Knights. He is also senior counsel for Sussex Strategy Group.

The post Roundtable: Canada needs to ramp up EV strategy – and make transit free appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Some heavy-hauler truckers spend upwards of $75,000 just on diesel, while the average Canadian driving an F-150 pickup 20,000 kilometres gets dinged for $2,000 at the pump. Imagine cutting those fuel bills by 75%, without the range anxiety many Canadians currently have around electric vehicles or long waits for the vehicle to juice up.

The Government of Canada is steadfast in its belief that electrification is key to decarbonizing our transportation sector and transitioning to a low-carbon future, but it’s moving at a snail’s pace. The federal government announced, through the 2019 budget, $130 million over five years to develop a network of higher-voltage ZEV charging and refuelling stations in the places where Canadians live, work and play. Support is also available to develop strategic projects for electric vehicle and hydrogen infrastructure for corporate fleets, last-mile delivery fleets and mass transit.

It should all help meet growing charging and refuelling demand, but it’s a fraction of what’s needed to roll out a coast-to-coast-to-coast ultra-fast charging infrastructure. ATCO estimates that we could install 500 stations across the length of the Trans-Canada Highway, each with 10 ultra-fast five-minute chargers for cars and two ultra-fast chargers for heavy-haul trucks for $3.45 billion – and possibly cheaper, if new power sources don’t have to be installed at each station.

The 5,000 ultra-fast car chargers would cost approximately $550 million and the 1,000 truck chargers $150 million, with the power generation installs running up to an additional $2.75 billion if new power is required at each station.*

Last year the federal government set a seemingly ambitious target of ZEV sales reaching 10% of light-duty vehicles sales per year by 2025, 30% by 2030 and 100% by 2040. If we’re going to meet those targets, Canada needs to put the development of an ultra-fast Trans-Canada charging network in top gear.

*Costs are based on consultation with industry experts.

The post Souping up the Trans-Canada highway with ultra-fast EV chargers appeared first on Corporate Knights.