Our Electric Vehicle Future
Who knew, back in the days of "who killed the electric car" that we'd be facing an entire fleet replacement effort? Or that Media would fail us by providing no real opportunity for public debate...
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023
Dear Vashon Loop Readers & Substack Subscribers!
Welcome to Relevancy Tuesday! Once again, our local news is your local news. We hope you’ll find this article intriguing, a bit surprising, and informative. To our delight, we’ve had a response to the article, and our fellow islander has agreed to allow us to publish those thoughts in our June or July issue. Keep your eyes peeled!
By Marc J. Elzenbeck
Short of being plugged directly into Hanford's nuclear power reservation, Vashon and Maury Islands are the ideal run-about ranges for electric vehicles. Although the Island has enough elevation changes to be notorious to visiting bicyclists during the annual “Passport to Pain,” we sit at a confluence of undersea cables sending us clean, stable, and practically inexhaustible power, borne of gravity passing water over turbines.
Woody Guthrie's majestic hymn to hydroelectricity, "Roll on Columbia," was directly commissioned by massive federal government investment into the Pacific Northwest during the Great Depression: "And on up the river is Grand Coulee Dam / The mightiest thing ever built by a man / To run the great factories and water the land / So roll on, Columbia, roll on."
Cheap electricity made the once sparsely populated Northwest boom, and almost 100 years on, we still benefit from the investment, with residents paying only about two-thirds of the national rate. It should probably be even cheaper. Washington, having only a 2.3% share of the United States population, generates more electricity from hydropower than any other state, and accounts for a whopping 31% of total US utility-scale hydroelectric generation. It sends excess energy on to eight other Western states and parts of Canada.
That makes us the linchpin of the “West Coast Electric Highway,” a network of fast-charging EV stations located every 25 to 50 miles along Interstate 5, Highway 99, and other major roadways from British Columbia to Baja, California. By coincidence and design, more than 66,000 all-electric vehicles are already registered in our state, fourth-most in the nation. As of 2023, Washington has more than 1,600 public-access electric vehicle charging stations with about 4,100 charging ports, and more lighting up every day.
But can everybody be driving an EV by 2030? Senate Bill 5974, signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee in 2022, is part of a $16.9 billion “Move Ahead Washington” package. Like other states, the bill would effectively ban the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2030. Per Inslee, “Transportation is our state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. There is no way to talk about climate change without talking about transportation.”
Here on Vashon, sure, everyone could go electric. We could shame the last diehard, gas-guzzling Toyota Prius owners into finally letting go of their old hybrid technology and embracing modernity. But while saving the planet, we might want to consider some math.
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