Vermont plans to use its $18.7 million share of the national Volkswagen “clean diesel” fraud settlement for an electric bus pilot program and to install vehicle charging stations.
The state Agency of Natural Resources plan, submitted to the Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust on Monday, must be approved by the trustee before the state can receive the money. It calls for purchasing and installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure and rolling out an electric school bus and transit bus pilot program in fiscal 2019.
“We’re excited about having this additional funding to install electric vehicle charging stations,” said Heidi Hales, director of Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation’s Air Quality and Climate Division. “We’re hoping this will make Vermonters more comfortable with making the switch to electric vehicles.”
Volkswagen was ordered in 2016 to set up an almost $3 billion environmental mitigation trust as a penalty for installing emissions-test cheating devices on roughly 500,000 diesel vehicles sold in the U.S. Because the vehicles released illegal levels of nitrogen oxides, funds from the trust must be used to reduce those gases.
Nitrogen oxides are a pollutant that contributes to acid rain and can cause respiratory ailments such as asthma.
“There’s a real public health benefit for electric school buses … because children are a particularly vulnerable population (to diesel fumes),” said Ben Walsh, climate and energy program director with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.
In conjunction with the release of the plan, ANR issued a Request for Information for potential administrators of the electric school and transit bus pilot program.
Megan O’Toole, an attorney with the state’s Air Quality and Climate Division, said the state took that step because there are so few electric bus pilot programs that the state wants to learn more about available types of buses and cost-effective ways to charge them before issuing a more detailed Request for Proposal.
“We’re looking for people to say what technology they think might work in Vermont as opposed to in a flatter, drier state,” said O’Toole.
The remainder of the fund is allocated as follows over its 10-year life:
· 24 percent to provide additional funds for the electric bus program after its pilot year
· 5 percent to establish a Class 4-8 electric truck pilot program
· 23 percent to cost-share electric or new diesel Class 4-8 trucks
· 17 percent to purchase new non-road diesel equipment
· 5 percent to a reserve fund
The submission of the plan follows almost two years of debate between legislators and the administration over how much of the windfall should go to electric vehicle infrastructure versus “clean diesel.” Lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to pass a resolution in 2017 to direct ANR to spend all of the money on electric buses.
In November 2017, ANR released a draft plan that called for 15 percent to be spent on electric vehicle charging infrastructure with the remaining 85 percent going to upgrading and replacing outdated diesel trucks and equipment. During the public comment period, environmental advocates requested that all of Vermont’s share of the settlement funds go to electrifying the state’s transportation sector.
At the beginning of the 2018 legislative session, the administration announced that ANR’s plan for the VW settlement funds would be subject to the “normal budget process.” The budget passed by the Legislature this May calls for all settlement funds spent in fiscal 2019 to go toward transportation electrification.
Walsh of VPIRG was generally optimistic about ANR’s final plan. He did point out that only 31 percent of the money is guaranteed to go to electric vehicles or charging stations. Depending on the results of the bus pilot program, funds reserved for electrifying the state’s bus fleet will be “revisited” to determine if solely electric or some combustion-engine buses will be purchased.
“It is concerning to us that they’re reserving the right to spend some of this money on fossil fuel vehicles down the road,” said Walsh.
Vermont became one of 10 states in the nation to implement a zero-emission vehicle program in 2013 that requires 15 percent of vehicles sold in the state in 2025 to be zero-emission vehicles. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is seen as a “co-benefit” of the increased electric vehicle infrastructure enabled by the VW settlement funds, said Hales of the Department of Environmental Conservation.
An estimated 47 percent of Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, according to the state’s most recent Comprehensive Energy Plan. Though the state is required by law to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2028, Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions have actually shown an uptick in recent years.
