Several high-level government officials visited a Hannaford supermarket in Rockland on Tuesday to unveil Maine’s first electric vehicle charging station funded by a $1 trillion infrastructure bill Congress passed in 2021.
About $15 million of that funding has come to Maine and will eventually pay for the installation of nearly 600 chargers across dozens of communities, including Bangor, Newport, Hermon, Portland, Rumford, Windham and Bridgton.
Maine has fallen behind in meeting the goals for electric vehicle adoption that were established in its 2020 climate action plan, and officials expressed hope that the gradual expansion of charging infrastructure will give more residents the confidence to invest in them.
“As a long-time electric car driver myself, I know that one of the reasons people have not made the transition is because they worry about access to charging stations. Today is a vital step to deliver significant fuel savings to commuters and drivers and preserve the health of our environment,” said First District Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.
Pingree was joined at the event by one of the nation’s top transportation officials, Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt, along with numerous other state, federal and business officials.
However, the event came on the heels of another decisive moment for Maine’s electric vehicle rollout, when the state Board of Environmental Protection rejected a controversial proposal that would have forced new car dealers to ramp up electric vehicle sales over the next eight years. Those rules had been proposed by environmental organizations, and it’s not clear if the Legislature will now take them up instead.
Transportation accounts for roughly half of Maine’s greenhouse gas emissions, which is why the administration of Gov. Janet Mills has set ambitious goals for adding renewable sources into the state’s energy mix and getting more drivers to use plug-in hybrid or battery electric vehicles.
But it has fallen behind on an initial goal of getting 41,000 light-duty electric vehicles onto the road by 2025 — and 219,000 by 2030.
Just over 12,000 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids were registered in Maine as of the end of 2023, up from around 9,000 in 2022, according to state figures. That means Maine would have to more than triple the number of EVs in the state by next year to meet its first benchmark.
Some of the barriers to wider adoption of electric vehicles have been the limited amount of charging infrastructure, particularly in more rural areas, and supply chain issues that have made it harder for customers to buy them, according to Hannah Pingree, director of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (and the daughter of Rep. Chellie Pingree).
Though batteries in newer EVs tend to last longer, the state is still focusing on installing more chargers for people who are traveling or don’t have enough time to charge at home.
The number of public charging stations in the state has more than doubled in the past five years, from 184 in 2019 to 459 last year, according to a recent progress report on Maine’s climate plan. Those stations have more than 1,000 charging ports that drivers can use.
The chargers at the Rockland Hannaford are meant to serve both local drivers who use the grocery store and visitors who are traveling along Rt. 1. Maine’s goal is to reduce the distance between any charger in the state to 50 miles or less, and it expects to have them in every region of the state by next year.
“Where do people need to be able to charge conveniently? How do we make sure they can get all the way to Aroostook County, drive to Canada? How do we make sure they can get to Washington County? I would say we’ve done a lot of hard work to make sure we fill those gaps,” Hannah Pingree said at the press conference.
Besides improving charging station infrastructure, Pingree said that the state has been trying to make electric vehicles more affordable by providing tax incentives for buying them. There’s a $7,500 federal tax credit available for some buyers of certain types of electric vehicles, and Maine has a $2,500 tax credit to help low-income customers buy used ones.
Pingree said the state just applied for a federal grant to enhance those tax incentives for low- and moderate-income EV customers.
“For a rural driver, a person who has to figure out how to pay for charging at their home, we want to make sure that that is accessible to aging Mainers, to people who are moderate and low income,” Pingree said.
The state is also working to update its climate action plan this year with new strategies for meeting its emission reduction targets, including some that are focused on transportation.
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.