Ventura County Electric Vehicle Ready Blueprint Prepared by: VCREA, Community Environmental Council, and EV Alliance Funded by the EV Ready Communities Challenge Grant from the California Energy Commission July 2019 Executive Summary and Document Guide The Ventura County Electric Vehicle Ready Blueprint is intended to accelerate and support electric vehicle and charging infrastructure deployment throughout Ventura County. Development of the Blueprint was funded by a competitive grant award from the California Energy Commission. The project team of Ventura County Regional Energy Alliance, Community Environmental Council, and EV Alliance has collaboratively developed the Blueprint framework to spur rapid adoption of electric vehicles in the region, in alignment with the State of California’s goal to deploy 5 million Zero Emission Vehicles by 2030. Electric vehicles are a truly transformative technology, as they emit zero tailpipe emissions, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 70 percent per mile compared to a gasoline vehicle (up to 100 percent for the many parts of Ventura County that utilize 100 percent clean energy), and achieve over 100 miles per gallon equivalent, allowing fueling costs as low as $1.50 per gallon equivalent. As transportation makes up about half of Ventura County’s greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to zero emission vehicles is an urgent and critical element of local climate action. The vision for the Ventura County Blueprint is to develop replicable models for statewide transportation electrification that will make electric vehicles and other clean mobility options fully accessible to everyone in our communities. The Blueprint’s comprehensive recommendations are intended to help local policymakers and community and business stakeholders take bold action to further accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and expand access to charging infrastructure. Ventura County’s 850,967 residents live in ten cities and the unincorporated County. As of October 2018, 8,589 of the 723,425 registered vehicles in the county were pure battery electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or roughly 1.2 percent of the total. While most of these electric vehicle drivers primarily charge at home at thousands of residential charging stations, the public network is growing quickly. As of early 2019, the County hosted 54 Level 1 chargers, 306 Level 2 chargers, and 92 DC Fast Chargers. To meet Ventura County’s share of California’s goals, the County’s roads will need to host 35,307 zero emission vehicles by 2025 and 116,777 zero emission vehicles by 2030 (roughly 15 percent of all vehicles). While this growth may seem daunting, 2018 saw electric vehicles achieve almost 10 percent of new vehicle sales across California. That electric vehicle market share must further accelerate to 30 to 40 percent of new vehicle sales by 2030 to achieve the state’s ambitious targets. Fortunately, the 2020’s are expected to bring initial purchase price parity between electric vehicles and conventional vehicles, and confer substantial advantages to electric vehicle drivers in reduced Total Cost of Ownership over the lifetime of an electric vehicle. To meet the region’s anticipated demand for electric vehicle charging by 2025, the County is estimated to need 3,241 public electric vehicle charging stations. This includes 1,073 charging stations at multifamily housing developments, 800 charging stations at the region’s workplaces, 1,167 public Level 2 charging stations, and 201 DC Fast Charge stations. This additional charging infrastructure is especially critical to ensuring that the almost 40 percent of Ventura County residents who live in multi-family housing have an opportunity to choose and charge electric vehicles. The Blueprint identifies the largest workplaces, destinations, multi-family properties, and other locations that should be prioritized for the next generation of charging infrastructure. It also suggests strategies for successfully accessing the many 1 relevant funding programs administered by the State of California, Southern California Edison, and other entities. The Plan Summary that appears at the beginning of the Blueprint provides a summary of context and barriers to electric vehicle deployment, and identifies targets and strategies for increasing electric vehicle and charging infrastructure deployment for various customer segments and use cases. It includes recommended goals and actions to help the County of Ventura and its cities lead by example with their own fleets and employees, jumpstart electric vehicle charger deployment at large employers and multi- family housing developments, ensure that the benefits of clean vehicles are accessible to Ventura’s Disadvantaged Communities and low-moderate income households, and proposes a fleet electrification strategy that begins with an initial focus on public agencies and electric transit and school buses. The Blueprint’s companion Electric Vehicle Accelerator Plans provide distinct community-specific Electric Vehicles Plans for the Cities of Ventura and Oxnard, and the Port of Hueneme. The Accelerator Plans provide program strategies for helping each jurisdiction to transition its own fleet to electric vehicles, to catalyze greater electric vehicle adoption amongst their own employees, and to develop sufficient charging infrastructure for their communities. The Port’s plan takes a special look at the health and environmental impact of electrifying drayage and heavy-duty trucks and powering these trucks and off- port warehouses with renewable energy. A comprehensive, step-by-step plan to electrify the transportation sector in Ventura County is included after the plan summary and is supported by a conceptual list of 49 projects, with high-level project descriptions, potential partners, and projected outcomes and benefits. These diverse projects range from the implementation of electric carsharing, to charging at multifamily housing, to farmworker electric vehicle vanpooling, and much more. The projects will be prioritized by the Blueprint project team and local stakeholders in anticipation of the California Energy Commission’s Phase 2 Blueprint Implementation funding and other potential funding sources. The Blueprint’s technical chapters include: • Plan Summary • Step by Step Implementation Guide • Funding-Ready Project Concepts • Chapter 1: Key State, Regional, and Local Electric Vehicle Goals, Policies, and Programs • Chapter 2: Technology and Market Context for Light Duty Electric Vehicles • Chapter 3: Charging Infrastructure for Light-Duty Electric Vehicles and Electric Vehicle-Grid- Integration • Chapter 4: Technology and Market Context for Medium and Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicles • Chapter 5: Accelerating Fleet Electrification • Chapter 6: Electric Vehicle Market Acceleration • Chapter 7: Autonomous, Connected, and Shared Electric Vehicles • Chapter 8: Public Electric Vehicle Siting, Permitting, and Installation • Chapter 9: Innovative Electric Mobility and “First Mile, Last Mile” Solutions • Chapter 10: Electric Vehicle Workforce Development 2 • Chapter 11: Resourcing the Plan The Blueprint development process included robust stakeholder engagement and the expert input of the Ventura County Electric Vehicle Ready Communities Coalition. The Coalition met five times over the course of the project and included over 25 stakeholders representing local governments, Port of Hueneme, workforce development interests, affordable housing authorities, commercial property management companies, businesses, community-based organizations, and nonprofit advocates. The project team also led public outreach to more than 100 major employers and property managers, conducted three focus groups and two listening sessions (two delivered in Spanish), and collected a total of 1,200 employee responses from three workplace surveys and 47 resident responses from one multifamily housing development survey. The community survey work received 350 comments as well as obtained 447 sign-up requests for Electric Drive 805 (the regional electric vehicle readiness initiative website) updates and notifications. Ventura County and California stand at the cusp of the largest change in transportation technology in over 100 years -- as we witness the integration of electric, autonomous, connected, and shared vehicle technologies. Electric vehicles have the potential to promote social equity and shared prosperity, especially in our most vulnerable communities, by dramatically decreasing air and climate pollution and reducing mobility costs. Autonomous and shared technologies have the potential to greatly increase safety and reduce congestion. To achieve these outcomes, however, requires both a bold vision and adequate resources. To that end, the Ventura County Electric Vehicle Ready Blueprint also identifies funding sources and strategies to help attract increased funding to the region to advance Ventura’s own vision of sustainable mobility. With Ventura County residents currently spending more than one billion dollars annually on gasoline expenditures, the accelerated electric vehicle transition envisioned here promises to put hundreds of millions of dollars back in local circulation as we replace harmful fossil fuels with locally generated clean renewable energy, while improving mobility for all Ventura residents. It is our hope that Ventura County policy makers, community leaders, and the public-at-large will quickly embrace this vision and act swiftly on the Blueprint’s recommendations, bringing