For climate campaigners, California is a conundrum. It has the lowest carbon emissions per household of any state, but also hosts America’s largest gas-guzzling car culture. Transportation accounts for 40 percent (and rising) of the state’s total emissions. Californians own half of all electric vehicles in the U.S., but they also buy more cars overall than any other state — almost twice as many every year as Texas — and just 8 percent of them are EVs.
That’s what Gov. Gavin Newsom aimed to change with an executive order in September. Newsom mandated that no new gas-powered cars will be sold in the state past 2035. But the order had nothing specific to say about the problem of EV infrastructure, just that we need more of it. (Duh!) While it has more public EV charging stations than any other state (nearly 27,000), California only has the fifth highest number of chargers per person — behind Vermont, Hawaii, Oregon and Colorado, and only slightly ahead of South Dakota. Way more charging stations, 35,000, are in private buildings. Read more…
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