EpicWorks Advisors

On Zero Emission Day, it’s such a thrill to announce that I’ll be moderating a panel on federal charging investments with my esteemed colleagues Cassie Powers, Loren McDonald, Steve Lommele, and Beth Croteau-Kallestad to discuss federal charging investments at the #RoadmapForth Conference in Detroit, Michigan on September 25. I am also honored to represent the #ElectrificationCoalition to help kick off #MoveAmerica2024 in Austin, Texas, and EpicWorks is delighted to join luminaries at the New York Stock Exchange at Climate Week on September 26 to continue conversations about holistic project delivery. The transportation sector has so many critical roles, including protecting one of our most precious commodities - our time. You can plunk an EV charger, or you can placemake with one. Placemaking through system level design and holistic project delivery can ensure triple bottom lines, pull profit into communities, and ensure, as Stephen Covey writes, that you keep the main thing the main thing - in this case, the actual movement of people and goods. Hope to see many of you doing this hard work with state and federal investments next week.

Busy week ahead! I look forward to connecting with friends and colleagues as EpicWorks Advisors is speaking at the MOVE America conference in #Austin, the Forth Roadmap conference in #Detroit, and will be wrapping up our week at #NYC Climate Week. If you’re attending any of these events, let’s connect—we’d love to chat! #MOVEAmerica #RoadmapForth #NYClimateWeek

?? Attention city leaders, state officials, transit operators, port authorities, and private sector partners! ?????????? ICYMI: Over $1.3 billion in federal funds are now available for EV charging projects through the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) program. ACT FAST: Repeat applicants, mark your calendars for the July 1 deadline, while new applicants have until August 28. For more details, check out the Federal Highway Administration’s Notice of Funding Opportunity and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation’s announcement. Interested in applying? Contact me directly! We created these programs to help companies and communities build cleaner, greener transportation systems.???? #EVcharging #CFI #DOTFunding

Join us at #GHSA2024 for the general session "Future Frontiers In Roadway Safety: What’s Coming Next?" Featuring speakers: ??Stacey D. Stewart, MBA, CEO, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) ??Erik Dietz, President & COO, MICHELIN Mobility Intelligence ??Lisa Freeman, Executive Director, Louisiana Highway Safety Commission ??Andrew Rogers, Partner, EpicWorks Advisors Register for GHSA 2024 now at: https://lnkd.in/epMNk7eG

Thank you to Jon Creyts, Tessa Schreiner, Mark Silberg, Dina Cappiello, Marissa G., and the RMI family for allowing me the honor to join them onstage at The Arts Campus at Willits' (TACAW) - the nation's first net-zero, all-electric performing arts studio - for a federal perspective on making climate progress in 2024. 'Local Roots, Global Impact', the title of the discussion, is also apropos of the facility itself, which as I was reminded by the facility operator after our panel, serves as a mindset adjustment to its local peers, with potential global impact.

Given conversations about scenario planning that have spiked these past several days, it's worth taking a step back to note that EV charging eligibility is not going anywhere - and I mean anywhere - as charging infrastructure, like numerous other investments, are embedded in federal eligibility going?forward. Why? The vast majority of eligibility available for EV charging infrastructure spread throughout the Bipartisan Infrastructure?Law is available under a wonky?type of federal budgetary authority called contract authority, which unlike it's more common sibling, appropriated budget authority, only requires the relevant authorizing committee to act in order to commit federal dollars, which (good news) Congress has already done. There's a good deal of well-intended perseverating about electrification dollars in particular - and contingencies are needed outside charging infrastructure to be certain - but the marketplace could use a signal about whether all or even the vast majority of federal funding for EV charging infrastructure could go away in?2025. Rest assured, it will not.

We owe Federal career civil servants a debt of gratitude for their accomplishment in furnishing the 88 pages of the first-ever U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization. The mere act of the four principal executive agencies that are responsible for transportation related programs (DOE, DOT, EPA, HUD) consolidating on a joint strategy is intended as an unprecedented signaling - not dissimilar from a single precursor of that vision, the creation of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation - to coordinate and effectively work together to decarbonize our transportation system: https://lnkd.in/eTxFVgCM. This signaling of how we move forward together means we might need not only new policy going forward, but some new structures and restructuring of business as usual. Before BIL and IRA, State DOTs generally contracted with pavement, road, and bridge builders. After BIL and IRA, State DOTs are still developing the muscle memory to learn how best to contract with currently strange bedfellows, but future 'meat and potato' constituencies, including but not limited to EV charging infrastructure providers, wildlife, conservation, and nature-based organizations, digital technology companies, utility providers, and solar, wind, and other clean energy companies. Because of the lack of familiarity with these constituencies, that results in needed matchmaking with the private sector, and even support from State counterparts in environment and energy offices to unlock the best potential of BIL and IRA dollars, and future transportation funding, in their realms of expertise. These relationships and that knowledge transfer are here to stay, and we now have a blueprint for success.

Let's do something epic.

Grateful that the Biden-Harris Administration - and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle - enacted the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, and related EV programs in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, as steady and supportive ramps to deploy charging infrastructure. These ramps follow a series of good government requirements, recognizing that these revolutionary deployments and reconsideration of what constitutes "infrastructure" are now enshrined in law for the first time, and we have to evolve to get this right. So prior to deployment of charging infrastructure with federal funds, the law required USDOT to certify State EV infrastructure deployment plans, and the Administration has approved every State's plan, in addition to D.C. and Puerto Rico. The law required the Administration to stand up a new Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, whose remit is to provide technical assistance and related activities in furtherance of this deployment, and the Administration, including the leadership at FHWA, U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Energy, and the White House, have stood up an office whose mission updated 20th century institutions for a 21st century need. The law required the federal government to adopt the first-ever minimum standards for EV charging infrastructure. We want chargers to work for people all the time and everywhere. The law required the federal government to ensure that the charging network is made in America. And States were required to solicit proposals to deploy charging infrastructure. To do so, a new categorical exclusion and 106 exemption was issued by the federal government to accelerate delivery of chargers, in addition to guidance, FAQs, webinars, and reports. Progress is always uneven, but it might be as good a time as any to recall the beginning, middle, and eventual end of this story, and that the law that gave us charging infrastructure less than three years ago has waterfalled its requirements exactly as intended because of the herculean efforts of so many. We knew we would be where we are today. State DOTs are doing their best to think about processes that refine delivery of chargers from, say, a bridge. The scatterplot to more and cheaper choices on our infrastructure systems are hard, and we’re all here to help. But through the noise, including the headlines we’ve seen, we’re still headed in the right direction.