Researchers: Yu, et al., including Greg Pierce
Equitable coverage and reliable operation of electric vehicle charging stations are crucial for a just transition to a carbon-free future. Luskin Center for Innovation’s Greg Pierce and co-authors found that disadvantaged communities have 64% fewer public chargers per person than other areas — a gap that grows to 73% for renters in apartment buildings. The chargers are also less reliable. With limited options for charging at home, investing in more and more reliable charging stations in underserved areas is critical.
Authors: Rachel Connolly, Daniel Coffee, Gregory Pierce
Since 2010, California has provided about $1.9 billion in clean vehicle purchase incentives, but Luskin Center for Innovation experts found that only 16% of that funding has gone to disadvantaged communities. Although electric vehicle adoption has increased across the state, it remains low in lower-income and state-identified disadvantaged areas. Controlling for other factors, the level of incentives affects clean vehicle registration, but weakens over time. Notably, the effect of incentives is larger in disadvantaged communities than for the rest of the population. The researchers recommend designing incentive policies with greater attention to equity to better support the communities that are most in need of increased clean vehicle adoption.
Authors: Gregory Pierce, Rachel Connolly, Daniel Coffee, and Lauren Dunlap
This report identifies inequitable patterns in both EV incentive distribution and registration in LA City and County. The authors include four case examples that illustrate the extreme EV access and realization disparities in underserved neighborhoods in LA, and thus the need for more targeted local, regional, and statewide assistance to get closer to an equitable transition to clean transportation and energy.
Authors: Rachel Connolly, Daniel Coffee, and Gregory Pierce
Funder: Southern California Edison
This report examines the distributional impacts of six of California’s light-duty clean vehicle incentive programs, especially for equity. The authors find that only about $314 million of more than $1.9 billion allocated went to households in disadvantaged communities. The researchers’ policy recommendations include: 1) allocate more funding for equity-focused clean vehicle programs, 2) be creative in maximizing used vehicle inventory, and 3) focus more on delivering rather than advertising the benefits of one-stop shops for incentive access.
Researchers: Doug Arseneault and Gregory Pierce
This report highlights equity-oriented micromobility programs that provide access to shared bicycles and scooters in five US cities. Drawing from interviews, the report offers pioneering models and actionable steps for government agencies, micromobility providers, and community-based organizations to expand access and affordability among low-income and black, Indigenous, and people of color travelers and improve infrastructure in their communities.
Researchers: Rachel Connolly, Gregory Pierce, and Bo Liu
This report documents lessons on how to improve equitable access to clean vehicles for underserved households.
Researchers: Dan Coffee, Aditya Voleti, Joshua Segui, Allison Yang, J.R. DeShazo, and Weilong (David) Kong
This technical report reviews the underlying analysis, data, and economic input/output modeling that supported our conclusions in the 2021 report Driving California’s Transportation Emissions to Zero. The researchers find that transportation decarbonization and the widespread adoption of zero-emission vehicles will spur the creation of new multi-billion dollar industries, resulting in tens of billions of dollars in annual consumer savings, and creating hundreds of thousands of full-time-equivalent jobs, while also driving significant contractions in some industries focused on servicing fossil fuel-burning vehicles.
Authors: J.R. DeShazo and James Di Filippo
Transportation experts herald congestion pricing as the gold standard policy for reducing costly traffic congestion. By charging drivers who use roads during the busiest times, such policies can reduce traffic in ways others cannot. But is congestion pricing equitable?
This Institute of Transportation Studies report outlines how California could use toll revenue creatively to minimize the financial burden of congestion pricing on low-income residents. The most promising option, the authors assert, is to send the toll revenue back to low-income households as a direct rebate, offsetting the costs of tolls for those who have to drive while still incentivizing people to choose other travel modes if they can.
UCLA researchers: Daniel Coffee, JR DeShazo, Joshua Segui, Aditya Voleti, Allison Yang
Led by the Institute of Transportation Studies, this study focuses on strategies to transition California’s transportation system to a carbon-neutral basis by 2045. The researchers identify scenarios, assumptions, and related strategies, tools, options, tradeoffs, and benefits for areas where action can be taken now, as well as where additional actions are needed in the future.
(2019 and 2021 report and policy brief)
Authors: Gregory Pierce, Britta McOmber, and J.R. DeShazo
California will require a transformation of its light-duty vehicle fleet to meet statewide air quality and climate change goals. As a percentage of household earnings, lower-income populations face disproportionate costs to maintain and operate a vehicle. Optimally priced incentives and financing options can therefore promote household economic well-being while generating broader environmental benefits. To do so, financial incentives should be designed to accelerate the retirement and replacement of older, high-polluting vehicles and increase the adoption of clean vehicles. Yet several challenges persist in enabling low- and moderate-income households to adopt near-zero and zero-emission vehicles in California.
This report, based on an LCI survey of 1,604 low- and moderate-income households, assesses current policies and informs future strategies intended to improve clean vehicle access and use by low- and moderate-income households in California. The results help identify effective policy approaches to improve access to, and adoption of, clean vehicles.
Research team: Austin L. Brown, Daniel Sperling, Kelly L. Fleming, Timothy Lipman, Lew Fulton, Jean Daniel Saphores, Gil Tal, Colin Murphy, Susan Shaheen, Bernadette Austin, Juan Carlos Garcia Sanchez, Elliot Martin, Marshall Miller, Michael Hyland, Susan Handy, Mark A. Delucchi, Daniel Coffee, J.R. DeShazo, Carolyn Abrams, Debapriya Chakraborty, Sina Dabag, Adam Davis, Kate Forest, Alan Jenn, Seth Karten, Blake Lane, Michael Mackinnon, Elliot Martin, Monica Ramirez-Ibarra, Stephen Ritchie, Sara Schremmer, Joshua Segui, Susan Shaheen, Andre Tok, Aditya Voleti, Julie Witcover, Allison Yang
California has an ambitious goal: achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. How to comprehensively reduce emissions from the state’s largest source of carbon emissions — the transportation sector — has always been a vexing question. To address this, the California Environmental Protection Agency partnered with the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies on a landmark study. LCI was part of the team from UCLA, along with UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine, that identified strategies to achieve carbon neutrality in the transportation sector by 2045. The study outlines policy options to significantly reduce transportation-related fossil fuel demand and emissions. Together, these policy options could lead to a zero-carbon transportation system by 2045, while also improving equity, health, and the economy.
Authors: J.R. DeShazo and James Di Filippo
This report presents a policy agenda to place equity at the center of California’s transportation decarbonization efforts — an essential element of achieving the state’s climate goals. Highlighting challenges and opportunities amid California’s push to cut carbon emissions and local air pollution, the study underscores the fact that low-income communities hit hardest by pollution have been largely left behind in the transition to cleaner transportation. The report provides recommendations to bring an equity focus to clean transportation policy, focused primarily on reforming zero-emission vehicle adoption policies, improving transportation access, and leveraging the zero-emission transition in public and private vehicle fleets.
Researchers: Gregory Pierce and Rachel Connolly
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, public agencies and nonprofits must adapt to serve their communities. This case study focuses on an innovative example of rapid but careful response to community needs: the Tune In & Tune Up vehicle smog repair program serving low-income residents of the San Joaquin Valley. San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District and program partner Valley Clean Air Now (Valley CAN) adapted quickly to meet community needs for cleaner running vehicles during the pandemic.
Researchers: James Di Filippo, Colleen Callahan, and Naseem Golestani
Heavy-duty diesel truck traffic is the main source of toxic diesel particulate matter pollution and a major contributor to smog precursor and greenhouse gas emissions in California. Zero-emission alternatives to diesel, particularly battery electric trucks, are becoming commercially available.
This report examines both the need for and current state of zero-emission trucks and the barriers and opportunities involved in moving toward zero-emission drayage trucking for the adjacent Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Referred to as the San Pedro Ports, they are the first and second largest ports by container volume in the U.S. The report then proposes a set of short- and medium-term policies and strategies that address main barriers and opportunities, with a focus on the San Pedro Bay Ports. The mayors of Long Beach and Los Angeles signed a joint executive directive confirming their commitment to transition to a zero-emission freight transportation system. Their stated goal is: “zero emissions for drayage trucks serving the ports by 2035.” The authors describe why an accelerated transition in the 2020s could help achieve this goal while providing other benefits.
The report incorporates findings from an earlier LCI-supported study, called Charging Infrastructure Strategies: Maximizing the Deployment of Electric Drayage Trucks in Southern California and serves as a foundation for future analyses that further support the transition to cleaner drayage trucking.
A second project is exploring strategies to incentivize zero-emission heavy-duty truck adoption in the Inland Empire of Southern California. This work is supported by a Climate Change Research partnership grant from the Strategic Growth Council.
The nonprofit organization Valley Clean Air Now (Valley CAN) operates multiple longstanding clean vehicle programs to reduce emissions from older vehicles in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) of California, a region with many disadvantaged communities with environmental justice concerns. Since 2015, Valley CAN has piloted and now operates the Clean Cars 4 All program (also known as Drive Clean in the San Joaquin), which offers clean vehicle incentives to low- to moderate-income households.
This evaluation by LCI utilizes several datasets to track program progress over the nine months of October 2018 through June 2019, a time when Electrify America provided enhanced funding for Valley CAN to accelerate the reach and pace of the program in the SJV. This initial assessment considers four stages of impact experienced by SJV residents via enhanced funding: awareness, involvement, engagement, and vehicle acquisition. Even in this short period, we observe notable positive impacts of ELAM funding in all four stages.
Authors: Gregory Pierce and Rachel Connolly
LCI researchers analyzed data from the San Joaquin Valley’s smog test and vehicle repair program known as Tune In & Tune Up. We found that the program is a model that other regions could use to efficiently reduce emissions from cars and other light-duty vehicles while addressing the mobility needs of low-income households. It is one of the first transportation programs in the nation premised on jointly achieving efficiency, equity, and environmental objectives, and is now informing a grassroots outreach pilot program, led by the Liberty Hill Foundation, bringing clean vehicles, clean energy, and financial assistance programs to low-income households in Los Angeles County.
Authors: Gregory Pierce and J.R. DeShazo
The Enhanced Fleet Modernization Program (EFMP) Plus-Up pilot program is helping hundreds of low-income drivers get out of old, inefficient vehicles and into cleaner, more efficient cars. This LCI report describes how the EFMP Plus-Up pilot was implemented in the two air districts chosen for the pilot phase, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District and South Coast Air Quality Management District, during the first year of program operation. The research is informing the state’s expansion of the program (now renamed Clean Cars 4 All) to other parts of California.
A previous study and article from LCI informed the design of the EFMP Plus-Up pilot. That research found that policymakers could facilitate more emission reductions by strategically linking vehicle purchase incentives with vehicle retirement incentives, which consequently the California Air Resources Board designed EFMP Plus-Up to do in support of low- to moderate-income households.
Authors: Tamara Sheldon, J.R. DeShazo, and Richard Carson
More Californians can now afford clean vehicles, in part thanks to research involving the LCI. The researchers assessed the performance of alternative rebate designs for plug-in electric vehicles and compared these alternatives in terms of cost-effectiveness and equity. They found that providing progressive rebate levels based on consumer income levels would provide benefits within those performance criteria. These findings helped inform the adoption of California’s progressive rebate system in which low- and moderate-income drivers receive an additional $3,000 to $6,500 in financial incentives to purchase a clean vehicle. Additionally, income rules for most rebates limit eligibility to households with less than $500,000 in annual income.
This article evaluates the effectiveness of current clean vehicle incentive policies in the U.S. and makes recommendations for improvement. The associated study found that policymakers could facilitate more emission reductions by strategically linking vehicle purchase incentives with vehicle retirement incentives (e.g., cash for clunkers). This is because purchase incentives alone do not influence the type, timing, and pollution intensity of the retirement vehicle, a decision that is a critical determinant of emissions. Aligned with our recommendations, in 2015, the California Air Resources Board introduced the Enhanced Fleet Modernization Program (EFMP) Plus-Up pilot program (as approved by Assembly Bill 118) to better integrate vehicle retirement and replacement incentive programs in support of low- to moderate-income households. See the previous report “Design and Implementation of the Enhanced Fleet Modernization Plus-Up Program.”
See the LCI’s Transportation Program page, including our Clean Mobility for Low-income Households initiative, for other examples of how LCI scholars are influencing transportation policy and programs to benefit low-income households and communities.
Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Planning
Researchers: J.R. DeShazo, James DiFilippo, Mark Hansen, Jason Karpman and Gregory Pierce
When consumers are choosing whether to buy an electric vehicle, the availability of charging infrastructure in homes and workplaces is often a deciding factor. This report identifies residential and workplace areas in Southern California where investing in charging infrastructure can spur electric vehicle adoption, ultimately helping to reduce carbon emissions and local air pollution. The uses data from the Southern California Plug-in Electric Vehicle Atlas, an online tool that enables users to explore local factors such as unmet demand for charging stations at multifamily dwellings, locations of employment centers, existing charging stations, and more. Cities and others can use the tool and the report to identify where charging investments would make the most difference.
Researchers: James DiFilippo and J.R. DeShazo
We evaluated a multi-unit dwelling-focused fast charging pilot program developed by EVgo, America’s largest public network of electric vehicle fast chargers. The study found that apartment and condo dwellers plug in their cars at fast chargers more frequently and closer to home than their non-multi-unit dwelling resident counterparts. This suggests that fast charging stations are an important component for encouraging electric vehicle adoption among condo and apartment residents, who are often low- and moderate-income.
Authors of the 2017 report: Jason Karpman, Norman Wong, and J.R. DeShazo
Authors of the 2016 report: Alex Turek and J.R. DeShazo
These two reports explore barriers and opportunities to plug-in electric vehicle adoption for residents of apartments and other multi-unit dwellings, using the South Bay and the Westside Cities subregions of Los Angeles County as case studies. The lessons learned are relevant to other areas as well. The studies were supported by the Southern California Association of Governments and the California Energy Commission.
See the LCI’s EV Infrastructure Planning page for other examples of how LCI scholars are informing a strategic expansion of EV infrastructure.
