Setting standards and targets for promoting charging infrastructure
Local, national and international authorities have been setting targets and standards for increasing the amount of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Targets refer to the setting of goals on deployment of charging infrastructure, e.g. having a set amount of charging infrastructure by a given year. Targets allow national governments to earmark budget streams for the increase of required infrastructure. These funds can, for instance, be aimed at allowing city authorities to increase the public charging availability locally. Targets can also go hand in hand with new regulations, as well as with regulatory reform. By facilitating the implementation of charging stations by individuals and private organisations, authorities can support the deployment of this infrastructure by actors other than public bodies. Targets further contribute to increasing enterprises’ and investors’ trust in the expansion of alternative energy vehicle markets.
Physical and software standards are a prerequisite for the legal and technical implementation of charging infrastructure. Standards must be harmonised in a given territory to ensure interoperability across the electric-vehicle charging system. This will be essential for long-distance and cross-border trips, for passenger and freight transport alike. Standards for physical charging infrastructure include, for instance, those referring to different types of plugs. International organisations and private actors have various standards for plugs. Currently, the most common standardised plugs are Type 2 for slow chargers and CHAdeMo, CCS and GB/T for fast charging. These standards were originally created to fit European, US, Chinese and Japanese markets. Software standards are also needed – for instance, to allow vehicles to communicate with the energy grid (vehicle-to-grid, or V2G), as well as for the payment system.
Targets and standards can be promoted by the same policy document. Directive 2014/94/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October 2014 on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure requires Member Countries of the European Union to set national standards and policy pathways for meeting them. It also sets minimum technical standards for charging infrastructure that need to be met in Member Countries.
The impacts of target-setting are difficult to measure.
Setting standards is a requirement for deploying charging infrastructure in any given territory. CO2-reduction benefits initially come from those linked to simply allowing infrastructure to exist.
Increasing levels of standardisation can potentially yield higher GHG-reduction benefits. In the United States, users currently face access barriers and are unable to use the less-than-20 000 stations publicly available in the country. Standardisation is essential for allowing users to make use of all existing charging infrastructure. A higher charging-infrastructure use rate could help reduce GHG emissions.
Economic costs related to the setting of policy targets depend on the content of the accompanying policy package. Three wider policy strategies can be used by governments for meeting targets. Governments can take a pro-active stance in building a given amount of infrastructure of their own volition or do it at the request of relevant public bodies at local levels. In both cases, costs will be linked to the construction of infrastructure. In India, for instance, the national government set a USD 145 million budget for supporting electric-vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) deployment in the country between 2019 and 2022. Governments should also think about the eventual implications of State support for infrastructure deployment for existing competition and State-aid regulations.
Governments can also have a facilitative strategy for the setting up of infrastructure, for instance by reducing legal barriers for meeting deployment of infrastructure targets. In this case, governments would not incur major monetary costs. In India, in 2018, the national government made setting-up public charging stations a de-licensed activity, albeit requiring infrastructure to meet the technical standards set by the government. Nonetheless, loosening regulations is not cost-free. Legislative work requires a large amount of time and negotiation to reach the desired objective. Political and human resources costs, however, are hard to quantify.
Setting standards also carries investment costs in terms of time spent on negotiations with industry and policy actors. Standards could be promoted in a country by convincing relevant industry actors to follow certain types of principles. Costs related to these more informal efforts can be linked, for instance, to potentially funding meetings and studies. Authorities can also choose to set standards through a more formal legislative processes. This would require funding as well as more in-depth studies, requiring a large amount of human capital and expertise. Ultimately, the time invested in standard-settings can reduce the time required to harmonise the type of charging infrastructure deployed in a country.
To minimise time investment costs for standard-setting, authorities can base their work on existing international standards. Some of these bodies include the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and, at the European Union level, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC). Individual national standard-setting agencies of key industry players, such as China’s National Standards agency (GB/T).
Deploying public charging infrastructure is required for decreasing user range anxiety and promoting the adoption of electric vehicles. However, current user behaviour in Europe shows that, once infrastructure is built, only 5% of vehicle charging takes place in public charging locations. The remaining 95% takes place at home and, when available, at work. (These shares can vary by country and even by urban agglomeration.)
Setting standards, as well as implementing facilitating policies for meeting targets, can have the added advantages of reducing costs for authorities. These measures can give incentives to private actors to deploy infrastructure. Thus, the high costs of deploying charging infrastructure pass from authorities to private actors, be they individuals, operators or other various enterprises. Setting software standards for charging infrastructure can also have the added value of promoting and facilitating vehicle-to-grid technologies (V2G). V2G can deliver further cost reductions by helping balance the electricity grid to which the charging station is connected.
Setting national standards can further influence the international adoption of EVs. The standard-setting process for charging infrastructure in the Netherlands has served as an example for other European countries. One positive aspect came from the decision to set the Type 2 plug as standard across the country. This helped convince other countries to adopt the same socket type, thereby facilitating cross-border EV travel.
Finally, standardisation can help reduce costs for users. For example, it can reduce component failure due to incompatibility between the vehicle and the charging infrastructure; it can also facilitate practices such as smart charging.
Setting standards that are not flexible enough for adapting to market realities can have negative consequences for private firms. In India, in 2018 a regulation required all new public charging infrastructures to have both European CCS and Japanese CHAdeMO outlets. However, the types of electric vehicles purchased differ across the country; as a result, demand for different types of outlet also varies. Asking infrastructure providers to always include both types of outlets increased costs unnecessarily and made it harder to develop sustainable business models. The regulation was ultimately changed to better adapt to market specificities.
New standards can also increase costs for charging owners and providers whose infrastructure does not meet with the imposed standard. Since existing infrastructure characteristics tend to respond to pre-existing market demand, adapting to new standards can be less market-efficient at the micro level. Lack of flexibility in standards can further constrain the capacity of private stakeholders to innovate, as well as to adapt to new market trends. Finally, standards which are too constraining and which cannot adapt to technological advancements quickly enough can also hinder the deployment of charging infrastructure that will be of use to new electric-vehicle users.
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