§17011 Transportation Electrification

Summary

Creates grant programs and rules to boost electric vehicles and related equipment. The Secretary must run a competitive, cost-shared grant program for states, local governments, transit authorities, air districts, private and nonprofit groups, or partnerships of those groups to carry out projects that encourage plug-in electric drive vehicles and other electric transportation technologies. The Secretary must work with the Secretary of Transportation and the EPA Administrator to set application rules, require annual data reporting on safety, performance, life-cycle costs, and emissions, and give priority to projects that speed early, wide use and that help U.S. vehicle production. Grants must include a mix of applicants, manufacturers, and uses when practical. Another program for qualified electric transportation projects must be set up no later than 1 year after December 19, 2007, with priority for large-scale projects or aggregators. Funding authorized: $90,000,000 each year for fiscal years 2008–2012 (at least one-third each year must go to local and municipal governments) and $95,000,000 each year for fiscal years 2008–2013 for the qualified-project program. Federal grant rules also apply. Defines key terms in short form: Administrator — head of the EPA; battery — an electrochemical electrical storage system; electric transportation technology — vehicles and equipment that use electric motors (including battery, hybrid, plug-in, fuel cell, and rail, plus related airport/port/truck-stop/material-handling electrification); nonroad vehicle — vehicles not classified as motor vehicles that use nonroad engines or electric propulsion; plug-in electric drive vehicle — a vehicle with a battery of at least 4 kilowatt-hours that can be recharged from outside and includes light, medium, heavy, and nonroad types; qualified electric transportation project — projects that cut air pollution, greenhouse gases, and petroleum use, such as shipside/shore-side electrification, truck-stop electrification, electric truck refrigeration, battery truck APUs, electric airport ground support, electric cargo handling, electric or dual-mode rail, distribution upgrades, and related infrastructure. The Secretary must also run a national education program that gives teaching materials to secondary schools, helps colleges with electric-drive engineering programs, runs the “Dr. Andrew Frank Plug-In Electric Vehicle Competition,” and funds college programs to train electrical and mechanical engineers; funding for education is “as needed.”