Bipartisan Electrification Legislation Remains Best Energy Option

"President Obama and his administration have made it clear that electric vehicles must play a major role in ending our nation’s dangerous dependence on oil. The electrification of cars and trucks will create jobs, protect our national security, and reduce pollution. Democrats and Republicans alike in both the House and Senate have lined up behind an electrification bill, and the administration has indicated its support; now it is time to move that legislation forward."

On May 27, Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate introduced legislation designed to advance the wide-scale deployment of electric vehicles and to develop the infrastructure needed to support them. The Senate bill, entitled the "Electric Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010," was introduced by Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).

The House legislation, entitled the "Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010," was cosponsored by House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL), Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA).

The legislation echoes recommendations put forward by the Electrification Coalition, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit group of business leaders committed to promoting policies and actions that facilitate the deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security dangers caused by our nation’s dependence on petroleum.

The EC’s Electrification Roadmap, released in November 2009, proposed a set of policies in which geographic areas would compete to be selected as electrification deployment communities: specific areas in which targeted, temporary financial incentives are employed so that all of the elements of an electrified transportation system are deployed simultaneously.

www.electrificationcoalition.org/