Researchers propose equitable EV infrastructure planning
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Researchers at UConn in Connecticut developed a framework to help communities prioritize electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure investments to address social and environmental inequities.
The team, including Omar Bustami, Francesco Rouhana, Timothy Vadas, and Amvrossios Bagtzoglou, responded to a United Nations report forecasting that the world will likely exceed 1.5°C of warming by 2030, and the need to reduce fossil fuel dependence through vehicle electrification.
They recognized that simply building charging stations isn't enough, as existing disparities in access and vulnerability could be worsened. The researchers created the Electric Vehicle Viability Score (EVVS) by assessing four categories. EV infrastructure, flood risk, environmental burden, and socioeconomic vulnerability, across each of Connecticut’s 169 towns. This allowed them to identify locations experiencing the greatest combined hardship and the factors contributing to it.
Connecticut’s diverse landscape, with urban, suburban, and rural areas, provided a strong test case for the framework. Beyond providing power for vehicles, the framework considers how EVs can contribute to community resilience by acting as mobile energy storage during outages, potentially powering critical facilities.
The team plans to expand the framework by adding a temporal dimension to account for changing community needs and scaling it for use in other states, and they are working to incorporate direct community feedback into the planning process to ensure projects reflect local priorities.
