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Crews work on a half-block section of Salmon Street July 14 that will feature four additional parking spaces reserved for electric vehicles in the process of recharging.
(Erik Lukens/Staff)
Portlanders who've walked, pedaled or driven past the World Trade Center on Salmon Street may have noticed a buzz of activity involving a handful of on-street parking spaces. Odds are, they didn't give the scene much thought, but those who own vehicles powered by gasoline or diesel may have heard a faint groan of trepidation from their wallets. They can blame the state's newly rescued low-carbon fuel standard for that.
The specific changes under way on Salmon are benign. Portland General Electric, an investor-owned utility headquartered at the World Trade Center, is retooling a half-block section that now features two general-use parking spaces and two charging spaces reserved for electric vehicles. When PGE is finished, the stretch will have gained four plug-in spaces, all reserved for electric vehicles in the process of fueling. The general-use spaces will remain.
The change is good news for owners of Teslas, Leafs and the like, who will fuel up for free during a two-year demonstration period. PGE hopes to learn more about "the logistical challenges of charging infrastructure in the right-of-way" and the potential to charge motorists for their fuel, explains PGE senior vice president James Lobdell to the city in a July 8 letter. Among the things PGE has in mind is "potential replication elsewhere in Portland." You know, expansion.
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There is, again, nothing nefarious going on here. The installation of charging stations is consistent with city policy, and this project breaks little new ground. PGE partnered with the city and Portland State University on a similar "Electric Avenue," which went dark in June to make way for campus construction.
But context always matters, and the context here has implications for those whose vehicles feed at the fossil-fuel pump. The low-carbon fuel standard, rescued controversially by Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Kate Brown this year, requires a 10 percent reduction in the "carbon intensity" of the state's road fuels over a 10-year period. If the policy survives a likely ballot challenge in 2016, some of the carbon reduction will be achieved through the blending of ever-cleaner biofuels into conventional gas and diesel stocks. Further carbon reduction will be achieved through the proliferation of alternative-fuel vehicles. Their fuel suppliers will generate credits and sell them to suppliers of conventional fuels, who otherwise won't be able to hit their carbon-reduction targets. The cost of buying credits will be passed along at the pump, boosting gas and diesel prices by up to 19 cents per gallon. Among those businesses well-positioned to reap the credit harvest are those that provide electricity via charging stations.
PGE has "not made a decision as to whether or not we're going to move forward" as a credit-generator, says company spokesman Steve Corson. We suspect the utility will. But if it doesn't, you can be sure other entities will take advantage of the credits generated by the "pumping" of electricity into vehicles whose owners (and fuel suppliers) will enjoy the proliferation of publicly owned parking spaces reserved for their exclusive use. If nothing else, you can be sure PGE and allied industries are thinking carefully about such a future.
Not only are they thinking about it, but they'll be talking about it July 29 and 30 at a PGE-founded conference that will take place at the World Trade Center, a short walk from the utility's shiny, new charging stations. EV (electric vehicle) Roadmap 8, as the conference is known, will offer sessions as varied as "Building a Healthy Market for Used Electric Vehicles" and "Policies that Work." There's even - blast from the past time - a panel on the role of philanthropy featuring the director of the Energy Foundation's transportation program, which promotes low-carbon fuels. The Energy Foundation, you may remember, contributed tens of thousands of dollars to grants lined up by one of former Gov. John Kitzhaber's campaign advisers for Cylvia Hayes, who advised the governor on energy and - surprise! - was enamored of the low-carbon fuel standard. Apparently, the statute of limitations on shame has expired.
Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will be a part of Oregon's transportation mix for years to come. What Oregonians should worry about isn't the vehicles themselves, but, rather, abusive policies that impose high costs on others to subsidize their use. The most abusive of these is the low-carbon fuel standard, which eventually will force owners of fossil-fuel buggies across the state to pay at the pump to subsidize electricity served up to electric-car owners through installations like PGE's new Electric Avenue.
Oregonians who want to kill the low-carbon fuel standard will likely have an opportunity to do it in November 2016. If they fail to act then, they'll be pumping cash to Subsidy Street every time they fill up for years to come.