Webinar: Navigating Zoning and Building Codes for EV Charging Infrastructure (Text Version)

This is a text version of Webinar: Navigating Zoning and Building Codes for EV Charging Infrastructure, presented on Feb. 15, 2024.

Webinar Transcript 2.15: Navigating Zoning and Building Codes for EV Charging

Bridget Gilmore, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Great. So, our agenda for today's webinar, we'll have just really brief introductions from the Joint Office and then hear from our great presenters. We actually have an hour and a half today, so we have such a wealth of information. We'll hear from Austin Willman, EJ Klock McCook, Ed Gilliland, Daphne Dixon, Mike Salisbury. And then we'll also have hopefully plenty of time for our panel discussion and audience questions and answers. But throughout the webinar, do feel free to put your questions in the Q&A function.

So, just a little bit on the Joint Office. We were established through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We are a joint office between the US Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation. Our mission is to accelerate an electrified transportation system that is affordable, convenient, equitable, reliable, and safe. And we hope to see a future where everyone can ride and drive electric come into fruition.

We support four programs through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and we provide unifying guidance, technical assistance, and analysis support for the NEVI program. This is the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program. We also are providing support for the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Program, the Low-No program for transit bus electrification, as well as the Clean School Bus Program.

All right. So, I will pause there, and I will ask our great team to launch our first polling question for our webinar today. So, we are hoping to find out what region of the country you are from. So, we'll just take a second and allow those votes to come through. Thank you so much for taking the time to do so.

I've got the functionality today where I can actually see the votes coming in, so this is fun. Great. It looks like it's starting to level off a bit. Can end the poll if you'd like, Derek. Awesome. Thanks so much.

So, it looks like we have a good spread across the country. Lots of folks coming in from the Northeast today. Thank you for being here. And then we can go to our next polling question. This one is about generally what industry you're coming from. So, we'll just give it a few seconds here.

Great. We can probably close this one as well. Thanks so much for taking the time to vote. It looks like our top first response is the one that's leading. We've got a lot of folks from locoregional governments here today, as well as state governments and folks from the EV industry. So, thank you again so much for taking the time to be here today. We'll get the show on the road.

So, I would now like to take a second to introduce our wonderful presenters. We're so grateful that they were able to spend some time with us today.

We're going to hear from Austin Willman, who is a Transportation Research Project Leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL. She provides technical assistance to support states and communities in their efforts towards electrification and supports communications and engagement work with the Joint Office to help facilitate the deployment of zero-emission fueling infrastructure and zero-emission transit in school buses.

We'll then hear from EJ Klock McCook who has joined the RMI Carbon-Free Transportation team. Has been there since 2014. And leads the Battery Circular Economy Initiative and passenger vehicle electrification infrastructure work at RMI. EJ's work with batteries includes evaluating the economic, social, and environmental opportunities of battery circularity, its investment needs, and the policy strategy needed to drive circularity. His vehicle electrification work includes public charging infrastructure, ride hail electrification, and transit bus electrification.

We'll also hear from Ed Gilliland who has been working to support local government practices in the renewable energy industry since 2015. In 2023, he co-authored the report "Planning and Zoning Guidance for Electric Vehicle Charging Deployment." And he's a Principal Investigator for the Charging Smart program, which supports and recognizes local efforts to facilitate EV charging growth.

We'll then hear from Daphne Dixon, who specializes in working with municipal staff and commissioners on EV readiness and EV zoning regulations and shares best practices with mayors, municipal leaders, organizations, and community members across the country and during the annual Coast-to-Coast EV Road Trip.

We'll then hear from Mike Salisbury who has been working with the City and County of Denver as their Transportation Energy Lead since 2018. His focus is on promoting electric vehicles and electrified mobility in all aspects of Denver's work, both within the city operations and among the general public. Initiatives underway in Denver include expanding publicly accessible charging stations on city and private properties, electrifying car share vehicles, electrifying the fleet vehicles in the city, increasing access to e-bikes, and also supporting electrified mobility in general. So, we've got a great lineup here today. I'll now pass it over to Austin to get us started.

Austin Willman, National Renewable Energy Lab: Great. Thank you, Bridget. So, for those who attended Tuesday's permitting webinar, I think the slide will look a little familiar. But I just wanted to highlight a few resources that we have available.

So, we have some new information available on the Alternative Fuels Data Center related to both state and local planning for EV charging infrastructure. So, this new content really focuses on how to create community friendly regulations and policy, include a new section we have on building codes, parking ordinances, and zoning ordinances.

So, this page provides kind of a high-level overview with links to best practices, resources, and also example plans. And I think what's great about all of this new web content is that it's continually kept updated and new resources are added to these pages as they become available. Next slide, please.

So, I wanted to touch a little bit on both the state and regional government, as well as local government as it relates to zoning and building codes. So, I know our great presenters on today's webinar are going to cover some of those best practices, as well as share some of their expertise with implementing zoning regulations and building codes for EV infrastructure, so I thought it would be helpful to really talk through some of the roles that state and local governments play for EV infrastructure planning.

So, we'll start again with the state and local governments. We found that one of the most critical parts is making sure that we're creating some regional consistency. So, when you're working to develop resources that provide guidance to local communities, it really is a great opportunity to establish some consistency among your planning objectives, plans and policies, and also regulations and ensure that there's some consistency from community to community.

We also found it's important to consider some of your statewide legislation that may either require or incentivize local governments to adopt those building codes with EV requirements. Other considerations could be including a minimum number of accessible charging stations or streamlining some of those permitting processes. So, a statewide mandate can accelerate local adoption and is really another way to create regional consistency.

Another approach is looking at some of the targeted outreach to make sure you have available resources and training to local governments. A couple other considerations are to maintain a web page and also provide funding support for community planning around EV structure and EV charging station buildout.

Derek Barylski, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Hey, Austin? Your audio's a little choppy right now. Is it possible to switch your microphone to something else, please.

Austin Willman: Let me check.

Derek Barylski: Thank you.

Austin Willman: Better, Derek?

Derek Barylski: I think so. Yeah. Go ahead and talk a little bit and let's see.

Austin Willman: Great. Thanks. So talking about the local role. We know it can be especially challenging.

Derek Barylski: Sorry, Austin.

Austin Willman: I'm not sure what's going on. We may have to go ahead and skip forward then. We'll have the slides available following the webinar.

Bridget Gilmore: Sounds good. Sorry, Austin. It's—

Austin Willman: No worries.

Bridget Gilmore: We were on Zoom for 30 minutes before, and it was fine, but thank you for stepping in. And yeah, like Austin said, these slides will be available afterwards.

And if you do have questions on this content, I know the AFDC resource is there, but you can also reach out for the Joint Office for any other technical assistance support. I'll move the slides along. And this is our technical assistance website. And you can also reach out to JOCommunityTA@nrel.gov if you are looking for some specific technical assistance, one-on-one meeting support, that type of thing.

Great. So, I will pass it along to our next two presenters. EJ and Ed, I believe, will switch off during their presentation. But I invite you both if you would like.

EJ Klock McCook, Rocky Mountain Institute: Great. Thank you so much. Hopefully, my audio's coming through clearly, Bridget.

Bridget Gilmore: Yeah, that sounds good.

EJ Klock McCook: Wonderful. Well, thank you, everyone, for being here. I'm certainly excited to be here. And thanks to the Joint Office for organizing this webinar and giving us an opportunity to talk through this very important topic.

My name is EJ Klock McCook. I'm a Principal with RMI's Carbon-Free Transportation team. And I, along with my colleague Ed Gilliland from IREC are going to be talking through our recent work that is geared towards streamlining, standardizing, and ultimately accelerating the local approval process for EV charging development. Next slide, please.

So just to give a quick overview of what we'll be looking at today, I'm going to start with a discussion on why this topic is important and how we arrived at the recommendations. And then I'm going to turn it over to Ed who will go into detail on a couple of the specific topics that are contained within this work. Next slide, please.

So why is this topic so important, streamlining, standardizing, and ultimately accelerating the local regulatory approval process for EV charging deployment? Well, the fact is that despite the incredible progress that has been made in many parts of the country over the past several years, we need to go much, much faster.

The EV market from 2022 to 2023 grew 50%. And despite what you might see in some headlines about the EV market coming off the rails, the fact is that's really specific to certain manufacturers, certain models. The EV market overall is continuing to expand rapidly. In fact, in 2023 for the first time ever in the United States, we sold more than a million cars– more than a million EVs.

And we're really at a critical juncture now at this point as we move past the early adopters who are more likely to take the time, be willing to figure out a challenging charging situation, who are much more likely to have easy access to home charging. Now we're moving into a broader segment of the market. And these folks need to have an excellent experience with their EV and charging, and also are less likely to have that easy, at-home charging experience. And so, as a result, this is where public charging really can fill a critical gap, and therefore why we need to make a lot of progress on this in the near future.

And so, what is the problem? Well, in the United States there are 23,000 authorities having jurisdiction, the entities that approve new charging projects. And each one of them have different process, paperwork, requirements, and even varying expertise when it comes to EVs and EV charging.

And all of that makes it difficult for a charging provider even to discover what is required and how to apply, and then also challenges in meeting varying requirements, some of which were created without EV charging ever in mind during the process. And all of that adds extra time and uncertainty to a project, which of course translates to increased risk and ultimately increased cost.

And so, as a solution, we modeled our work on the very successful SolSmart program that IREC has been leading for many years now. SolSmart was designed and has effectively streamlined and reduced cost for permitting of residential rooftop solar. What we observed is that in the EV charging space a lot of the problems are similar, and so we built this project in the mold of SolSmart in order to overcome these problems for EV charging. Next slide, please. Thank you.

So how did we do this? We created a working group within the Planning, Zoning and Permitting Subcommittee of IREC's Sustainable Energy Action Committee. Now, that's a mouthful. But the important part is this working group was composed of more than 40 stakeholders that represented auto OEMs, all of the major national charging providers, many folks from the planning community, and other EV experts.

And this working group collaborated for about a year, first identifying what are the most critical challenges in this space? And then, how do we overcome them?

Once we had a complete draft of the guidance from this group, we actually shared it with an even broader set of stakeholders to ensure that we were getting as broad and comprehensive a set of input as possible. And the final result is a document that provides clear guidance for predictable and transparent local standards that will help accelerate the deployment of the nearly three million charging plugs– public charging plugs that will be needed in the US by the end of this decade. Next slide, please.

So, when I'm talking about local EV readiness, this is really a very broad topic. Includes things as diverse as municipal fleet electrification to utility planning, how the public utility commissions interact with the system, incentives, and more. But for the purpose of this conversation, we're really focusing on the piece around local regulatory approval. And there's three components to that. Next slide, please.

So, the first is building and electrical codes. And I saw a question come in early on about fire safety. This is certainly a key part of that. The building and electrical codes are what needs to be achieved by the project in order to ensure the safe and effective operation of that hardware when it's complete.

The second piece is around planning, zoning, and development requirements. So, this affects where the charging– where the chargers can go in the community broadly, where they go relative to streets and buildings, what they need to look like, et cetera. And the last piece is the approval process. What is actually required to apply for approval, and then how is that application evaluated and ultimately approved? Next slide, please.

So, to tackle these questions, again, we put together this document. And here's a quick outline or overview of what we have. It begins with summary information to explain why it's needed, the key characteristics of EVs and their chargers, and the local regulatory approval process, but then dives into the details on five key topics.

First– for each topic, first outlining the challenges that are present today, our recommendations on how to overcome those challenges, and then examples, case studies, and best practices from around the country where progress has already been made on these issues. Following that is dialogue on the zoning and permit approval process. So, if we go to the next slide.

So, the five key topics within the regulatory requirements are first the planning documents. Has EVs and EV charging been considered in the overall municipal planning documents, in the requirements and regulations for EV charging, et cetera? Then we have zoning and use designation. So where in the community can the EV charging go? Is it considered a primary use or an accessory use?

Parking requirements. And how does that interact with EV charging, in particular when it comes to parking count mandates. Charger accessibility is required by the ADA. EV charger readiness, et cetera.

Then design, aesthetics, and equipment location. So, what does it have to look like? Where can it go in relation to buildings or streets, et cetera? And finally, on-street charging considerations, particularly important for larger, dense cities like Chicago or Philadelphia and New York, et cetera.

Then the approval process. So, the actual application process. Are these forms available online? Are there forms specific to EV charging? Are electronic signatures permitted? In the review process, is it a sequential or parallel process? Do projects that meet certain requirements achieve administrative approval, or does everything have to go to the planning board? These are the kinds of questions and considerations that this document explores. So next slide, please.

So, with that, I'll turn it over to Ed to get into more details on these three particular topics. But I'll also offer that either in the Q&A or following up later, we welcome questions on any of the topics that I showed in the outline. Over to you, Ed.

Ed Gilliland, Interstate Renewable Energy Council: OK, great. Thank you so much, EJ. So yes, as you can see, there are a lot of topics there that we addressed. And so, we have time today to touch on three of them. Planning, zoning, and parking. So next slide.

OK. So, planning. As EJ said, planning is critical to the successful regulatory processes locally because the planning and the planning documents provide the overall guidance for all of the more granular documents and the more granular processes and practices that are used by the locality in approving development, including EV charging. So we can go to the next slide.

So yes. So, planning matters, and it's really important that EV charging be addressed, first of all, in the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is the overarching plan that sort of guides many of these more granular documents, specifically the zoning ordinance.

In fact, in most states, the comprehensive plan is a legal document and the zoning ordinance must be consistent with the comprehensive plan. In addition, we certainly want to address EV charging and supporting plans, such as climate action plans and transportation plans.

The planning process, of course, is going to include a lot of stakeholder engagement. And I want to just point out two stakeholders that should definitely be included when we talk about EV charging. First of all, the regional planning organizations. These organizations, such as– have a major role in transportation. Typically, they not only– they are often a conduit for federal funds to localities regarding transportation improvements.

They can also play an important role in providing technical assistance to the localities within the region. Especially helpful for localities that may lack the funds or the resources or staff to be able to dive into EV charging in the weeds. So very important to consult and work with the planning organizations.

Likewise, the utilities. The utilities are going to be providing the power for the EV charging, and so the utilities are a very important player in the process and should be involved. And the localities should also be involved in the utility planning processes. So it's a two-way street to make sure everybody is on board.

And finally, another area of planning is to look at your existing locations, your locations for public charging. Look at the potential demand for EV charging by use case. And be sure to include specifically the locations, the disadvantaged areas, and the locations where residents may lack access to off-street charging. OK. Next slide.

So we talked about planning as guiding. Zoning. It's also important to note that zoning itself is going to be really the primary document that's going to regulate the approval of EV charging, at least from the planning and zoning perspective. Now, if you were at Tuesday's webinar, you heard a lot about codes and code enforcement and electrical and building codes, so that is one area of regulation.

But now we're looking more at the planning and zoning aspects. And here, the zoning code is going to be the primary document we're concerned with. Next slide.

Just to note that the zoning code, of course, is a legal tool for zoning. And not only does it talk about the various land uses and where things can be used and how they can be used, but it includes the administration and the procedures. Typically includes the administration and procedures of the process to approve development projects through zoning. So it is very comprehensive, it covers a lot of aspects, and important in many ways. Next slide.

So I'm going to drill down further on zoning and talk about accessory use, discretionary reviews, and primary use. You can go to the next slide.

Accessory use. OK. So essentially, accessory use is subordinate use to the primary use of a property. For instance, a solar panel on the roof of a house is an accessory use. A solar farm out in the county is going to be a primary use. Likewise, most of the time when we talk about EV charging, we're talking about accessory use.

And it would be important for the local government to define accessory use and how EV charging typically is considered an accessory use. That is important because accessory use typically undergoes a lower level of regulatory review. It has a lower impact on the property and surrounding properties, so it is not going to have to go through as much scrutiny as some other larger, more impactful projects.

So, we would suggest that along those lines that accessory use be allowed by right in all zones for EV charging and that it should be reviewed administratively. And we would avoid what we call discretionary reviews. What are discretionary reviews? Let's go to the next slide.

So typically, a discretionary review is going to get more scrutiny at the local level, and it would go beyond city staff or county staff, but involve a zoning commission, a city council, a planning commission. There would likely be public hearings. And this process could go along for months. And so, we try to avoid discretionary reviews for EV charging.

One type of discretionary review is– one instance where you could have a discretionary review is if you don't even talk about EV charging in the zoning code. So, if it's not even in the code, then the local officials are scratching their heads and they're saying, how are we going to address this? Let's send it through a discretionary review process. Again, another reason to address EV charging in the zoning code.

Conditional use is another example where you have a– say a church is allowed to be in a residential area, but it must be subject to compliance and conditions of the zoning code and go through a long public process through public hearings in the zoning commission. Again, we want to try to keep EV charging as a– avoid this process for EV charging. Next slide.

Site plan review often also requires discretionary reviews. Site plan review is done mostly for nonresidential or multifamily projects that are larger projects. They have a greater impact on the property and surroundings. And so, the local regulators take a closer look at these development projects. Again, public hearing, zoning commission reviews.

And they can be time-consuming. They can take months or years, so we try to avoid that for EV charging. There is– often you will see a minor site plan review process that can be improved administratively, and that can work for EV charging. Next slide.

OK. So, we talked about accessory use. Another term related is going to be primary use. So here, we're talking about, say, a charging hub where it's at an intersection and its primary use is to serve the traveling public with EV chargers or fleets or a combination of the two.

And again, though, we still want to avoid the discretionary reviews. One way to do that is to define primary use EV charging as its own use. What currently happens is that localities just lump EV charging and primary use together with a gas station, and they just say, eh, they're about the same, right?

Well, they're not, really. The EV charging does not have the safety and environmental concerns that you would typically– in line with or typically associate with a gas fueling station. So we want to make EV charging as its own use and then set it as an approved use. It can be approved. It does not have to go through the discretionary reviews. OK. Next slide.

So in summary, on these few slides allow accessory use EV charging by right in all zones. When clearly a primary use, allow EV charging as an approved use. Avoid discretionary reviews.

Now admittedly, there are going to be times when EV charging for some reason or other does have to go through a discretionary review process. In such cases, it is going to be very important for the locality to be very clear upfront with the developer that this is going to be discretionary reviewed. It's going to take this long– likely take this long.

And so at least allow the developer– provide that certainty upfront as to what's going to trigger a discretionary review. And finally, of course, we're going to have to look at updating the zoning codes to address many of the issues that I just raised. Next slide. All right. I'm going to touch briefly on parking and particularly regarding parking counts. And next slide.

So many localities set minimum parking requirements. But the trend– the trend is to reduce those requirements to encourage more travel by transit, bike, pedestrian, foot traffic. And so– but nonetheless, when applications come in for converting existing spaces to dedicated EV charging spaces, it's often viewed as a violation of these minimum parking requirements. Next slide.

So really, the response there is allow existing spaces converted to EV charging spaces to count towards the minimum parking mandate. Somebody's still in that parking space. They're just using it for charging.

For accessible charging, it's going to be larger– take up more space than a standard parking stall. So we're suggesting that accessible spaces be allowed to count as two spaces for determining minimum parking requirements. And finally, we suggest that parking space reductions for charging-related equipment count towards minimum parking mandates. Now ideally, you want to put the charging equipment outside of the parking area, but if you can't do that then it may require some reduction or some reduction in parking spaces. Next slide.

OK. So we look forward to answering your questions. There's a web link to our report. And I'll turn it back to, I guess, Bridget.

Bridget Gilmore: Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks so much, Ed and EJ. We really appreciate all the information. So now I will invite Daphne to come up. And I'll advance your slides for you, Daphne.

Daphne Dixon, Connecticut Southwestern Area Clean Cities: All right. Thank you. And Ed and EJ, that was awesome as always. All right. So my name is Daphne Dixon. I'm Executive Director of Connecticut Southwestern Area Clean Cities. We are designated by the Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office. And our coalition is hosted in our nonprofit, which is Live Green Network. Next slide, please.

All right. So I just wanted to share with you some experience about EV zoning regulations and what some of the programs we have done on the ground here. So a long time ago, I ran for the Zoning Board of Appeals because I really wanted to make a difference in my community. And during my time on that zoning board, I actually saw firsthand how powerful zoning regulations actually are and how they have such a huge influence and impact on the community.

So back then when I was on that board, I learned the process of how zoning regulations are actually passed, what it really looks like, what the appeal process is, how commissions and staff actually work together. And again, just the power that these few people on the commission actually have.

So back in 2019, we started doing EV readiness studies. The utilities asked us to learn more about what was going on in the communities. So during that process while we were doing these studies, we spoke with zoning commissions and zoning staff. And fact then, for a lot of good reasons, they just didn't see the need for zoning regula– EV zoning regulations, and they really weren't that interested in doing them. They thought maybe it was kind of over-regulating.

And so from those conversations we had, what we really saw was that there was a great need to provide more information to zoning boards and commissions about the benefits of EV zoning regulations, how they actually could help their towns. So we launched a 12-week program, Municipal EV Readiness Toolkit. It was a 12-week program. And in that program, we had a module a specifically on EV zoning regulations.

And at that module, we had two presenters from two cities here in Connecticut that had already passed EV zoning regulations. That was Hartford and Middletown. And their presentation actually influenced another city in Connecticut, South Windsor, to go ahead and develop and pass EV zoning regulations.

So after that 12-week program that we did– I think we had about 60 municipalities– another 20 in the following year participated in a 12-week– a nine-month program. And in that nine-month program, we did clarity sessions. And every single one of those 20 municipalities said they were interested in learning about EV zoning regulations. So we could see that there actually was quite an interest.

So when we did our nine-month program, we had a couple sessions on EV zoning regulations specifically. And we had the person who had been in the 12-week program who had been influenced and passed zoning regulations, we had that person from South Windsor come to our nine-month program module on EV zoning regulations. And of course, what that did was that influenced another community to go on and pass EV zoning regulations.

So we could see that there was– people were learning and towns and commissions were learning from other commissions. And the ones that we saw that participated in our program, they followed sort of a process. And so we documented that process along with them and we created the Municipal EV Readiness– excuse me, the EV Zoning Regulations Blueprint, which is this guided process to hopefully easily pass zoning regulations.

And then what we wanted to do is we wanted to see if we could scale this blueprint. And so along with our other Clean Cities coalitions that were interested in this– namely Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington, DC– we shared the blueprint process with them to help them scale EV zoning regulations in their states.

We also did a pilot in Fairfield County last year where we provided countywide EV zoning regulations training to 23 municipalities in Fairfield County. And we also showcased the six municipalities that had already passed EV zoning regulations. And so now what we're up to is creating model language starting in Fairfield County of EV zoning regulations model language, which we hope will be completed by May 1.

And then we're going to take that model language on our Coast-to-Coast EV Road Trip when we head out this August. We go through 17 states and we do a lot of demonstration events. We work with a lot of partners to do events at municipalities. And we'll be sharing that information. And so just as we start off on this presentation, the overall premise of this is if EV zoning regulations can be passed at the local level and scaled across the country, the results are going to be consistent– a consistent charging experience that is safe, equitable, and that it supports EV adoption.

So if you go to the next slide, this is our Coast-to-Coast EV Road Trips. So we've done these road trips in '22 and '23. I've driven 11,000 miles across 30 states. And I will tell you that the experience is– [LAUGHS] I mean, it's great, you know? And it's great to be out there, a pioneer and all of that.

But that being said, it's very inconsistent. You often feel very unsafe when you're charging. It's very unpredictable. It's kind of like a first date. You don't know if you're going to like the charging station. You don't know if they're going to like you. You don't know what it's going to cost. I mean, it's all these things. And it's very unpredictable, and you never really know what's going to happen. And it's not equitable. So go to the next slide.

So the NEVI program, which is amazing, and other funding opportunities are helping charging stations be installed rapidly across the country. But what really is needed is a shared vision and commitment nationally and locally so we can get these best practices so that cities like Chicago and small towns and rural communities that everybody can have this shared idea of why EV zoning regulations are so important.

So of course, we all know that NEVI was created to provide convenient, affordable, reliable, and equitable network of chargers throughout the country. But the only issue with NEVI is that it sets a minimum standard for charging stations, and it does not address issues like safety, protection from lightning, sleet, rain. You know, the covers that we need. And it doesn't really address equity issues like, how can we pay in cash?

And so a lot of states are just– as they do their state programs, they're just following the national minimum requirements and not adding on some of these other things that are actually very important. There are some states like Pennsylvania that have actually sort of up-leveled their NEVI standards, and they actually are requiring lighting and covers. Here in Connecticut where I live, we just have the minimum standards. So if you go to the next slide.

[SIGH] So EV zoning regulations can really create change in a lot of different ways. So if we have these sort of minimum standards from NEVI, which I think a lot of people are looking at, obviously, and if states really aren't looking at safety and the experience and equity, it's really left up to the municipality to set EVSE standards locally. And EV zoning regulations, in my opinion, are really the best option to create– to start creating the standards that we really need. If you go to the next slide.

In working with a lot of different municipalities, and also in our experience traveling across the country twice, we know that there's different areas of our towns, right? There's different zones. And it may be that in some cases, we're going to need EV zoning regulations that are going to help us maintain the character of a neighborhood. Like in our historic districts, maybe we don't want the huge screens.

In some places, we're going to want them to be covered. Not maybe every place, but in some places. And in some areas like with street parking where we have the charging stations and the cars all lined up, something like making sure we have retractable cords I think is going to be something that's really important.

If we go to the next slide, one thing that we have heard a lot about is, you know, what if you want to pay cash at a charging station? Well, you really can't. There's no way to really do that right now. There's all these other ways. And ChargePoint is very good. I think they're the best at– we have seen it offering a lot of options. A lot of the charging apps don't have as many options. But nobody has the option to pay cash.

And so we really can't overlook this issue. And I'm not quite sure if this is exactly a zoning issue. Maybe building codes. But we have to make sure that moving forward, if we want EV charging to be accessible to everybody because not everybody has a bank account, not everybody has a credit card, we're going to need to figure out a way to have those machines, the reverse debit machines where you can put in cash and get out a debit card so people can use cash using one of these machines to charge their vehicles in the future. Moving forward at the next slide.

We don't want to overlook safety. So do we need to be zoning for cameras? Do we need to be taking into consideration proximity to other businesses and other services so the EVSE is not, like, way in the back of the parking lot, you know? It takes about five seconds to be robbed at gunpoint, so if somebody's out there kind of isolated in the back– it's not lit, it's all these things– you really can feel very vulnerable. And I think that we want to be sure when we're doing our EV zoning regulations that we're looking at safety.

One thing I'll say is during one of our workshops last year, Stamford, Connecticut, who had passed EV zoning regulations, learned about the idea of also zoning for lighting. And they went back and they amended their zoning regulations, and they did add lighting, and they were pretty happy about that. Great. Safety.

If you go to the next slide, this is just an overview of the three areas– safety, experience, and equity– that I feel is very important to factor in when you're creating local EV zoning regulations. And when I talk– when I say experience, it's very important that as we move forward with all of these charging stations that we're installing all over the country that we are making the experience of charging as similar to getting gas as possible.

So I know it takes a little bit longer and all of that. But it can't be that the charging experience is so very different, so completely different than getting gas because if it is, we're not going to be able to encourage more people to buy EVs because the charging at public and destination EVSE is just going to look too difficult. And so we really need to up-level this experience of charging and make sure that we're doing everything we can to make it something that we feel like everybody could see themselves doing.

If you go to our next slide, this is just some metrics on our 2020 Municipal EV Readiness Toolkit program, which included the modules on EV regulations. And so we had over 200 people participate. Lots of towns came to it and cities. So it was very successful, and it has really led to a lot of work throughout the state.

If we go to the next slide, this is some metrics on our Fairfield County program that we did. We actually had 21 out of 23 towns fully participate in that program. And the best part of that program, the part I enjoyed the most, and I think the participants did, was hearing from the other towns that had passed regulations and then just having conversations during those programs. And a lot of great information was shared. Very local information. If you go to the next slide.

So this is just a cover of our EV Zoning Regulations Blueprint. It's kind of a folksy document. If you go to the next slide, this is our nine-step process. And it's not ours. It was really developed by those three– the first three towns that we worked with that went through the process of adopting EV zoning regulations. And so they all kind of followed this same process. And it actually resulted in some good regulations. So if we go to the next slide.

So what we're still seeing– and it's all for very good reasons– is resistance to zoning commissions and staff wanting to do EV zoning regulations. And after talking to so many folks in this position, I get it. You don't want to over-regulate.

And the other thing I've seen is that– what I really respect and appreciate about staff and commissions is they really want to understand more about EVSE before they're making zoning regulations and passing them. So they themselves want to understand things about, what is it to be a site host? And Ed, I know, talked a little bit about percentage of parking.

They also want to know things about liability. We get a lot of questions about that. Things about enforcement. There's all kinds of questions about that. Signage. We could be here all day talking about that.

And then of course, people still have questions about the reliability of the equipment and different styles and different types. So there's just a lot that folks still want to learn before they're ready to go ahead and pass EV zoning regulations. If we go to the next slide.

So one step we're taking is we are developing a Connecticut Task Force on EV Zoning Regulations to create a guidance document that will really help inform zoning staff and commissions on various issues that influence these zoning regs. So it's actually, I think, a pretty complicate– it's easy in some ways and actually very complicated in others.

When you're doing EV zoning regulations, you really do want to have input from the community. You really– you want to be working with these groups and more when you're doing the zoning regulations to make sure you're not leaving something out, to make sure you're educating the public. And it's really quite a lot.

We also want to create guidance documents because we know that zoning commissions and staff already have too much to do, and we're hoping that by having this additional guidance document, it will help provide them with information so they don't have to go looking for it on their own. We know that EV zoning regulations can also– creating them can feel like sort of a burden, and we're hoping that this will help lighten that burden. And we also don't want 169 towns in our state of Connecticut trying to figure out all these things individually by themselves.

So between the model language and the guidance, the model language that we're creating and this guidance document, our goal really is to provide resources to zoning boards and commissions that will make creating and passing EV zoning regulations– zoning regulations a lot easier because we know how much they already– you all are already doing.

So that is– if you go to the next slide, you'll see that that is my contribution for today. And if you're interested in receiving that blueprint or have any questions about how to implement EV zoning regulations in your town, feel free to contact me. Thank you.

Bridget Gilmore: Great. Thank you so much, Daphne. I guess we'll move from the experiences of Connecticut to Colorado. So I can invite Mike up, and I'll advance your slides for you, Mike.

Mike Salisbury, City and County of Denver: Thank you so much, Bridget. Thanks again for the Joint Office for hosting us, me today. It's great sharing this space with all these experts. It's fun to just be on a webinar and really get into the weeds and learn so much about this topic. So yeah, great to be here with my co-panelists.

Again, my name is Mike Salisbury. I work in the City of Denver's Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency. Work on all things kind of around sustainable transportation, electrified mobility. I've been plugging away– ha, ha– in the EV building code space for a number of years now. I've been with the city of Denver six years, and before that in an advocacy position working specifically on EV-ready building codes and how to get cities, municipalities, states to implement them.

So I think at a high level, we've been talking a lot about zoning codes. My focus is really on that building code, which really is all about new construction. So all the new construction– commercial, residential– that is happening in cities in, say, like Denver. That's what the building code governs. It says how those buildings will be built, what the requirements are from a safety, fire prevention, electrical outlook are. So that's what we're trying to focus on.

So I think they're really important for us because as a city, and many other cities and other places, we have very aggressive decarbonization goals. We are trying to get to 100% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2040, which really means shifting our transportation system as much as possible to electric vehicles, if not entirely to electric vehicles by that time frame. And to meet these levels of demand, we do know we will need thousands of additional private, public charging stations to give everyone who wants and needs access to a convenient place to charge a place to do so.

So we do expect over 100,000 new residents in the city of Denver over the next, say, 20, 25 years. And we do expect a lot of them are going to be living in new multifamily buildings. Denver, like a lot of core urban areas, we don't have tons of like new greenfield space where we can build lots of new single-family housing. So really, to fit in all these additional residents over the next decades, we expect a lot of them are going to be going into multifamily housing.

And so we see multifamily housing as a big focus for us for those reasons we expect. That's where people are going to go. But also, where you live is generally the most convenient place to charge an electric vehicle. You look at who owns an electric vehicle today. The vast– majority, vast majority of those people are living in a kind of single-family, two-family home where they do have access to that garage, that easy place to plug in every day for 12-plus hours.

In addition to being really convenient, those long dwell times at someone's home give us the possibility to look at demand management and shifting demand, different hours. Because that's really important because as a city, we also have plans really to electrify everything, not just the transportation sector. But also, how do we electrify– how do we switch from natural gas heating to electric heating and heat pumps?

And so we don't have an infinite supply of electrical capacity. We're very constrained, in fact, in that space. And so the more we're able to have longer charging sessions at lower powers allows us to use the electrical capacity for more things overall. So really important to have as much flexibility as possible. Lots of low-power– Level 1, low-power, Level 2 charging is going to be much better on the grid perspective than a lot of public 100, 150-kilowatt DC fast-charging sessions.

So let's see. Yeah. So this slide really shows our recently passed City of Denver Building Code. These are the EV charging requirements for new construction. Going on the left-hand side is the different kind of land uses that we've identified in the code. And again, our highest level of requirements are really in that residential multifamily space.

We do have requirements for EV-ready for all new single and two-family homes. I don't show that here, but that is also our work to get charging into all newly built single-family homes that we do see.

So here, really we have EVSE installed. So charging station provided. EV-ready is having the panels to capacity and the actual wiring and circuit installed up to that parking space. And then EV-capable, city of Denver we define it a little bit differently than lots of municipalities. In our site– in our case, that just means there's conduit from the panel to the parking area so we do not have an EV-capable requirement, but there is also panel capacity.

So these are different levels. We really looked at, again, really focusing on higher level of requirements around new multifamily construction but also think about the other land uses as how we serve and provide convenient charging to all the people who do not and probably will not have access to home charging. So in the city of Denver, almost half the population lives in existing multifamily housing, and that has proven to be one of the most challenging spaces to provide charging access to.

So while we have lots of programs we're working on to install charging in existing multifamily buildings, we recognize that's challenging. That's hard. And so we did want to make sure that the building code, as we're building new commercial, retail, shopping, workplace buildings that those also provide some level of charging that can be used both as a public charging, but also potentially workplace charging, workplace charging being another great example of a longer dwell time where you can spread that charging load over a longer period of time.

So really, in some ways we're really just trying to figure out, how do we provide the most access to people and especially those who are– that public charging space in the kind of business use, mercantile, commercial spaces? It's really also very focused on how we're providing charging access to people who don't have that easy access to charging at home.

So these are the percentage requirements. We did a lot of work with stakeholders, trying to get to exactly the right one. What's going to work with what's accessible– most acceptable to the development community? What also is going to help us take the path to get towards our other goals that we're working towards. Let's see. I think we can go to the next slide.

And just one thing that's also really important we talk about is just making sure that EV charging is accessible. So there are requirements in the building code that a certain percentage of those new EVSE installed need to be accessible. We also have an additional requirement in the Denver code that looks at universal– we call it universal access spaces.

So these are spaces that are essentially– have that drive aisle to make them accessible to a larger number of people, but they're not an ADA-placarded space. So trying to create more spaces where people with different levels of disabilities or challenges will have access to charging is something that is very important to us in the city of Denver. Next slide, please.

And we also really worked in the latest code cycle to try to add in as much flexibility as we could because lots of different building types all have different end uses. So we wanted to try to provide developers, provide building owners that flexibility to meet the– provide access to charging in different ways.

So making sure that, yes, charging stations can be dual port, and one charging station can serve two parking spaces. So it's not just about serving parking spaces, but also– it's not about– just about serving the parking spaces, but serving the vehicles at those parking spaces.

In those multifamily settings where we do have those longer dwell times, we do allow things like smart meters, smart panels, load management systems to really reduce the upstream required capacity. So instead of having every single parking space have its own dedicated, you know, 6.6-kilowatt charging levels, we say, no.

If you share that circuit among multiple spaces with this load management system or smart charging system, you can reduce those upstream requirements so the building as a whole can have much, much lower electricity capacity requirements. Because it can get very expensive, very quickly, and certainly causes the development community lots of heartburn and headaches about the cost of that additional electrical requirements.

So likewise, we also try to see there's use cases in the commercial space, for example, where– in all spaces where you can substitute a number of DC fast-charging stations instead of Level 2 stations. We've had, for example, Costco. New Costco built in Denver.

It was like, it doesn't make sense for us to provide a giant parking lot, dozens of Level 2 stations because no one– well, you could spend three to four hours at Costco. I hope you don't. But if you do go to Costco, the DC fast-charging experience much better fits their dwell time and a much better service to their customers than the Level 2 stations.

And then again, also, we don't require really small businesses, really small buildings to meet those requirements. So a little bit of flexibility for those very small property sizes.

Next– and I think this is my last slide– just some resources here. Again, I've got a link to Denver's 2022 Building Code. The language can be very, very technical. I had some really smart people who really– who work and live in the enforcement side of this space helped me write it because it's really important, I think from my perspective.

I work in the kind of– a lot of policy space, but it's also really critical that you work kind of hand in glove with the people in your municipality who are actually enforcing and the people who are reviewing plans, electrical plans and building site plans, and are going to go out and enforce it because what makes sense on a policy level doesn't always translate to, well, how do you enforce this? How is my inspector going to know and see this on site when they go to check off if someone's met these EV requirements?

And I also want to just point to one other resource, which is from the EV Charging for All Coalition. It's kind of a much broader set of information talking about equitable charging, especially in the multifamily space, which I've talked a lot about today. But this is another really good resource to share with– to just review. It has lots of great examples of how– different ways to do the code. And it's also being– done in partnership with Plug In America.

So just another great resource for people to tap into for more information. They can really take a deep dive and get some great ideas and thoughts about how they– different approaches you can take to address EV-ready building codes. And I think that is it for myself, and looking forward to discussion and questions. Thank you.

Bridget Gilmore: Great. Thank you all so much. I can invite everybody to turn their cameras back on if you'd like, and we will– now we have a good 30 minutes or so to go through some questions that have come in as well as some that came in through registration as well. But I just want to say thank you all so much for all those great presentations. I definitely learned a lot and have a lot of notes on my end.

Yeah, I think just to start us off, we'd love to just see, where should local governments look to get started when they're looking to adopt zoning or building codes? Some insights of, how long does it take? I know we heard a little bit about who needs to be in the room, but what does it really look like to get started?

Daphne Dixon: I'll kick off. I mean, when we've worked with towns, one way we start– because it can be very overwhelming– we just ask towns and zoning commissions, sometimes the mayor, just to start off with doing an EVSE charging policy for their town. Just a policy just to get the conversation going, just to create an overall policy.

Because what we have found is you have the most success when you identify a champion in the town. And then they bring on a couple of people that also want to see EV zoning regulations. And they kind of just start getting to work on just talking about it and seeing who's interested, where there might be barriers, and just getting the conversation started.

And sometimes that's the easy thing to do because regulations can take a while, is just to do just an overall sort of policy that's kind of just general. It's kind of like just dipping your toe in the water. So that's one way to get started. And just make sure you have a champion and that he or she has got a couple of friends, buddies to go to do it in partnership.

Bridget Gilmore: Yeah, Ed, do you want to add? I see you came off mute.

Ed Gilliland: No, I think that's a good approach. I think at some point you might– the planning department or zoning department will form an internal group, or they may have a– set up a blue ribbon or panel of residents or officials in the city to guide that process.

But I think Daphne hit it on– start with the simple, but then build up in a group of stakeholders to start to move the process through the adoption of code language. They'll want to– typically, a locality will want to go out and look at comparable code language that other community cities have done to give them an idea of how they can take that, tweak, it and put it into a zoning code that then they can feel comfortable with and adopt.

Bridget Gilmore: Yeah. I know, Daphne, you had mentioned that you all are working to develop sample language. I guess, how applicable is sample language across different states and jurisdictions? Does it have to be pretty flexible I guess in providing sample language that could be adopted?

Daphne Dixon: Yeah. I mean, we're really hoping that when we complete our model language and then we do our road trip and we're sharing it– we're going to be going across, like, 18 states and sharing– talking to different municipalities, just to see, how relevant is it?

But I think a lot of the things that we're seeing that are kind of being overlooked in other areas, which is equity, the experience, and safety, I think those are areas that are important to every state, every town. So I think in those places, I think in those areas it's pretty universal.

Bridget Gilmore: Yeah, that's great. One question that had come in was, what is an example of a state action that's helped facilitate EV-friendly regulations? Maybe this is a good one for Mike. How has the state of Colorado tried to facilitate this process?

Mike Salisbury: Yeah, no, we're lucky. The state of Colorado has done a lot of great work in the building code space especially. Like, they have provided some really great guidance. Like, state working groups setting statewide minimum standards and really helping with language that low governments can adopt.

So kind of making it really easy for, like, hey, I can take this language from the state of Colorado, apply that, tweak it to fit the local context, but also just being a resource. You know, someone who is invested in the building code, knows a lot about it, can answer questions and connect you with other municipalities who are having the same question at the same time. So I think that's also a really great– it's always super helpful to me to be talking to other municipalities who are going– trying to answer the same questions, trying to address the same problems.

Because they just have– if someone's a year or two ahead of you and they've been implementing it for a year and they're like, oh, this is what we've learned after we passed the code, that is so helpful to myself because those real-world examples of what the code does in practice. And what are those unexpected consequences or unintended things that come up that you're like, oh, I didn't think of that scenario, that you only kind of– I find you only tend to get to those after you've passed the code and someone's reading it and trying to understand how this impacts their new building. So I think that's collaboration. But the state of Colorado has really helped facilitate that collaboration as well.

Daphne Dixon: In Connecticut, the state passed make-ready through the building codes. They passed make-ready codes so that all new buildings, they had to be make-ready. So that actually prompted more towns to want to get more involved in EV zoning regulations.

And so what one town did when those building codes came through– and it was for new buildings– they actually up-leveled their EV zoning regulations and said, well, it's not just for new construction, but if there's retrofits or a lot of the– there's no– no new schools in Connecticut, but if you're going to be doing remodeling that require, then you'd have to have make-ready for charging stations.

Bridget Gilmore: Yeah, that's interesting. Also thinking about how Mike was talking about the difficulties within Denver of having limited options for new construction versus maybe a state perspective of make-ready as part of the new construction happening across an entire state and getting ready for EV charging. I guess a question for EJ and Ed, could you explain a little bit about how the zoning practices vary between Level 2 charging and then the faster DC fast-charging?

Ed Gilliland: Sure. So it really shouldn't vary. If you have a parking lot for a big box store and you want to put in 10 L2 chargers, or you want to put in five L2 Chargers and five DC fast chargers, or you want to put in 10 DC fast chargers, that really shouldn't be a concern of the zoning approval process. It's really– it's still an accessory use.

If you have a busy intersection where you're going to put in a charging hub, again, that is a primary use. It should be treated as a primary use whether it has L2 or DC fast-charging. It's probably going to have DC fast-charging.

The utility will certainly be wanting to weigh in [? and ?] fast-charging, because that has a bearing on the load, it goes on to the grid. And health– the city may have some health and safety concerns on a– related to the type of chargers. But from a zoning, planning perspective, it really shouldn't matter.

Bridget Gilmore: Great. Thanks for that. A question that came in on the topic of e-bikes, which Mike, you had in your bio that that's something that's part of the work you're doing in Denver. But just wondering basically how zoning codes could be tweaked to support the use of electric cargo bike deliveries. Are municipalities thinking about zoning to encourage or support micro delivery hubs to be used as a hub for bike charging and other uses of these cargo bikes? Is that something that's part of the zoning process at this time?

Mike Salisbury: So I can– I mean, I can try to speak to that a little bit. I don't think we're looking specifically in amending the Denver zoning code to allow for that. We're trying to do more in that space as far as like e-cargo bikes deliveries and how we accommodate those in more– kind of denser urban areas. But so far, it's been more of a one-off, like, trying to create those delivery spaces, make sure those are allowable under the zoning code, but kind of repurposing existing right-of-way parking spaces, for example, to be– to serve as that type of cargo bike loading zone more so than the entire zoning code.

But I think that would be trying to think through, what's in the zoning code requiring parking? You know, especially in an association with a business, making sure that there is that possibility to have flexibility with providing parking spaces for those cargo bikes. But I don't know if anyone else has dived into the combination of zoning codes and e-cargo bikes.

Bridget Gilmore: I'm getting some shaking heads. Yeah. [LAUGHS] That's a good question, though. There was another question that came in for Mike, but I definitely welcome others to jump into. This is thinking about multifamily housing. How do you address that users are paying more for electricity versus saying a dedicated parking space that basically is wired to the unit's meter, lower power, L2, more of a home setting? So I guess trying to think about– yeah, paying for electricity in multifamily housing when some folks are charging their vehicles, and some may not.

Mike Salisbury: Yeah. No, that's a really good question. And I think there are lots of challenges in the multifamily space, and that's just one more of them that makes it really interesting because it's– ideally, you know, what I think– is it Sven who asked the question? It's really like you really want a situation where every household, every unit has their charging kind of tied back to that unit's electric meter so they're all being billed at that residential rate, which is generally one of the least expensive ways to charge. So that's the ideal.

But obviously, it's also challenging during any construction to provide 100% of parking spaces with that access from day one. So you do often end up going back to some kind of mixture of dedicated and shared parking and then all different– there's so many different variations of multifamily. There's some that have assigned parking, some that have shared parking.

And so you've got to really try to think about how the code– and Denver is not– we didn't really address this. Like, how do you make that flexibility so that shared and assigned parking situations can meet that code in different ways? But it does get challenging because if that building owner is trying to offer shared parking and that is tied back to the building meter, they're probably going to be trying to recoup some kind of their cost.

And so you're talking– when you start talking about, they're going to charge $0.25 a kilowatt hour because that's going to help them cover their O&M cost, well, that starts to become a lot less affordable and much less desirable as you're getting– you're inching close to the price of gasoline at the $0.30, $0.35 a kilowatt hour range. So that's not perhaps becoming ideal.

I wish I had a great answer, Sven. I do– I'll also say it's interesting. There's also a real challenge in the affordable housing space, that affordable multifamily housing space. They don't really have guidance. They're not able often to charge to charge at their affordable housing properties.

So right now, they're kind of– generally, there's no guidance so they're kind of having to give it away for free today because there's no guidance coming down from HUD about, how do they treat those pass-through costs? So great question. I don't know that I have an answer, but I hopefully provide at least some of my brain download in that space.

Ed Gilliland: And my hat's off to Denver because if I calculated the numbers right, it looks like they're requiring that 60% of multifamily spaces be either EV-capable, EV-ready, or EV charging. And that's a significant percentage, which can really help residents in those units get access to EV charging.

Of course, what we want to avoid is having those residents have to go offsite. If their only option is to go offsite and charge in commercial or public spaces, then they very likely will be paying a much higher rate than the single family homeowners, the homeowners that have really nice charging in their home at very low rates. So those high percentages of EV-capable, EV-ready, EV charging requirements are really going to tip the scales or help tip the scales to the benefit of a multifamily resident.

EJ Klock McCook: And just one more thought to add there. I mean, I think you're getting the sense from this dialogue that it is both a complicated question and there's a lot of different approaches that all, I think, have to be deployed simultaneously.

Another one that I think often gets overlooked is workplace charging and thinking that beyond the typical white collar office worker where workplace charging usually is now. And we need to be thinking of it at retailers, at malls, other service kind of locations, at the airport for employee parking because if you can charge at work, that can be an effective replacement for home charging.

I can tell you that's my personal situation. I don't have the ability to charge at home. I charge at work. It makes it work. So that's another tool in the toolkit for the multifamily question.

Daphne Dixon: Yeah. And studies do show that if you have access to workplace charging, you're way more likely to buy an EV.

Bridget Gilmore: Great. Thanks for that, all. One question that had come in was, how can a community member and end user of an EV station be part of the planning process? How should they try to get involved? Maybe this is a good one for you, Daphne.

Daphne Dixon: Yeah. So community members are great ways– it's great for community members to get involved. So the easiest way, and what we tell community members when they ask us, what can we do, the easiest thing to do is to call your– or contact the zoning commission.

So in Connecticut– it might be a little different in some of the other states. But in Connecticut, commissioners are elected– basically elected volunteers, and they serve on this commission. And you can reach out to them, email, call them. Sometimes you have to go through the staff and set up a meeting to talk with them.

And the most important thing when a community member wants to get involved is to make sure that they're really well informed and they don't go in there just with too many questions, but more solutions. And explain to the commission why it's important, how it can help the town.

And the other person that's really good too for a community member to talk to is the economic and community development director because in a lot of– especially in places like Connecticut, where there's a lot of tourism, people come here in the fall and look at the leaves, whatever, having charging stations is great for tourism. And economic and community development directors are always keen on, how can we make our town more attractive and more profitable to tourists?

So talking with them, maybe setting up a meeting between economic and community development director who's a staff person and a commission is a good way to get the conversation going. That's the easiest way.

Bridget Gilmore: Awesome. Thanks for that. One question for Ed and EJ. You all had talked about the parking, minimum parking requirements. How do you all think about the areas where the demand for parking exceeds the amount of parking that's available? Is there resistance to setting aside EV parking at the cost of reducing parking for conventional gasoline vehicles?

Ed Gilliland: Sure. So this is a real– can be a very contentious issue, certainly in more urban areas where parking is very tight and there is– by setting aside more spaces for EV charging, you are, in a sense, are taking away– may be perceived as taking away spaces from the non-electric vehicle owners.

I will say that anytime you are doing planning in a community for establishing where public charging is going, potentially on-street charging is going, it's going to be very important to involve the residents in the process so that they do have a say in what the ultimate requirements are.

However, I will say that we do need to provide and show the electric vehicle driving public that there are spaces available to charge. And so we're going to have to put out the regulations that ultimately allow some spaces to be available so that if you are in a– you have an EV, you're not driving around for hours, looking for a place to charge.

You can drive around. You can see that there are spots opening for electric vehicles to charge. And that will encourage you as an EV owner to want to continue to own an EV. It will also encourage those that do not own electric vehicles to think about, hey, this might be a good thing because I'm confident that there are spaces available for me to charge.

So it is a– there's a tension there, admittedly. There are some baby steps the community could take. If they thought that they were really reluctant to go full throttle into providing EV charging, they could set up a rule where if anybody is parked there, they're going to be charged at the rate that they would be charged if they were hooked up to the charger. They could put signs up that say Preferred EV Parking.

So there are some ways to potentially address this. But it's very important that we open up spaces for EV charging and let the public see that the amenity is available and it's good to be an EV owner.

Daphne Dixon: Another approach to take– that was awesome, Ed. Another approach also to take and what we've also done is identified property owners that– have conversations with them and ask them, would you be interested in putting an EVSE in? And just looking for the ones that want to do it. And the ones that don't want to do it, maybe come back to them another day.

And our experience has been in the different towns that we've worked in, the 50 towns that we've worked in, we can always find somebody in the downtown area who actually is interested in putting it in. And just to start where it's easy, to start where they want to do it, where they're excited so that you don't have to have those more difficult conversations that can sometimes lead to friction down the road.

Bridget Gilmore: That's a good approach, bit of a low-hanging fruit type of approach. One question that had come in– and I think, Daphne, you had talked about this, with retractable cables for on-street parking.

But there's a question that had come in kind of on the right-of-way and how to basically allow for charging adjacent to multifamily dwellings. How does this fit into the building code process and the zoning process right now for on-street charging?

Daphne Dixon: I'm going to– I'm going to punt that to Mike because that sounds more like building codes.

Mike Salisbury: Yeah, right of way charging is a whole different animal. We do see this as a potential solution. So there's definitely situations where there's new multifamily construction happening, not necessarily for huge, huge high [INAUDIBLE] high rises, but a small number of units in one spot. It just doesn't have land for parking.

And so they have actually looked– can we put this in the right-of-way just outside the building? And you've got to really be mindful because often as a default, our permitting will say, that's not associated with your property because that is a public piece of land in the right-of-way that you are putting the charging station at, so it does not count towards your EV building code requirements, even though it might be right outside– right adjacent to your property.

So it's a really tricky space. We're trying to make that best use of the right-of-way. But it's also challenging because I think Denver is not– other cities are like this. There's lots of ways to use the right-of-way. And when we're talking about– we're talking about those higher level mobility goals, we're trying to get people not to drive cars as much. So that right-of-way can be used for lots of other things like dedicated bus lanes, bike lanes. There's lots of other competing uses for the right-of-way.

So it's not always a slam dunk to say, you know, oh, we have right-of-way. Let's put EV charging there. There's a lot of other stakeholders who might have, shall we say, other thoughts what the right-of-way should be used for besides charging electric vehicles. So there's a lot of– [LAUGHS] let's say one more complicated question, but a very good question.

Bridget Gilmore: That's a tough one. Well, I know we only have three minutes left. I guess I'll turn it over to you all if you have any last parting thoughts, and then I'll kind of plug our next upcoming webinars and where you can find additional resources. But wanted to give you all a chance to provide a last thought if you'd like. Optional. [LAUGHS]

Daphne Dixon: There was a ques– there was a question in the chat that was about Milford, Connecticut, and about fires. So I'll just say something real quick.

Towns are doing different things. I know we've had some fires here in Connecticut with– and they've gotten a lot of press. I think sometimes life is dangerous and all kinds of cars have fires, and things like that.

One practice that we've seen transit agencies do and other places do is to separate EVs as much as they can and potentially not to put them underground if they don't have to. But every town needs to make decisions on their own based on the safety for their residents.

Ed Gilliland: I would just say to update your zoning code. Consider updating your zoning code and addressing EV charging and letting– making it easy for you as the local regulator and for the developer to get a meeting of the minds to facilitate charging development.

Bridget Gilmore: Awesome.

EJ Klock McCook: And maybe just to go one level above there, I think all of that needs to be done in the context of broader EV goals and strategy for the community. And so having a clear understanding of where you are today, where you need to be in five years and in 10 years then provides the context to make those needed policy changes.

Bridget Gilmore: Awesome.

Daphne Dixon: And be sure to email me if you want the nine-step process to the EV Zoning Regulations Blueprint.

Bridget Gilmore: Great. Yeah, thank you all for that. I'll just share, I guess, our final resource slide so you all can see and refer back to this if you'd like to see in our slide deck afterwards. But there are a lot of really great resources of where to get started and some great examples from across the country.

In terms of Joint Offers upcoming webinars, we'll be doing one on curbside charging. So kind of topical and came up today. That will be on February 27. And then we'll also have one on workforce development tools and resources in the EV charging space.

But if you didn't get your question answered and you'd like to follow up, please feel free to do so. We have a contact form on our website, driveelectric.gov. And feel free to subscribe for news alerts and all that good stuff.

But just want to say thank you again to all of our participants today. Thank you for being here. And thanks so much for the panelists for sharing all this wealth of information. I know I learned a lot. Thank you.

Mike Salisbury: Thank you, everyone.

Daphne Dixon: Thanks.

Bridget Gilmore: Bye.

Daphne Dixon: Have a good day.

Bridget Gilmore: Have a good rest of your day.