Put a Socket in It: Getting EV Charging into Multi-Unit Buildings

Combatting climate change is an all-hands-on-deck emergency. To fully eradicate emissions by 2050 – the path that scientists agree will keep warming below 1.5ºC and mitigate the worst warming-induced catastrophes – the world needs to electrify practically everything and power the grid with carbon-free electricity. It’s an enormous task, and even approaching success will require a herculean effort. At the same time, there is a moral obligation to center equity in all aspects of this effort – which means making planned decisions to assist those traditionally left out.

In September 2021, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA), a far-reaching climate bill that, among other things, aspires to put 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) on Illinois roads by 2030. It’s a big leap; at its current pace of adoption, by 2030 Illinois should have about 180,000 electric cars on the road. Electric car ownership has challenges. Primarily: How do you charge the car? If you live in your own home with a garage, then the answer is just plug it in. Currently, about 85% of EV charging occurs at home. In fact, home charging is so preferred that EV drivers in one experiment were willing to pay to charge at home instead of at a public station or at work. Charging at home is simply the most convenient option. But what if your home is an apartment?

Unfortunately, only an estimated 38% of US households are equipped with charging availability at their homes – and because there are more vehicles than households in America, only an estimated 22% of vehicles have access to at-home charging. EV owners who cannot charge at home have to charge either at work or at public charging stations, but this is another barrier to equitable adoption. Neither at-work nor public charging is guaranteed to be available, and low income areas often lack charging stations entirely. Scarcity of home charging impedes full EV adoption, as research suggests the more convenient charging options are, the more likely EV adoption is to increase. In fact, availability of home charging has been found to be the “the most important piece of infrastructure in convincing consumers to purchase a [Plug-in Electric Vehicle].” Current EV owners are also wealthier and more technologically inclined than the average American, so this convenience barrier will likely become more significant as lower income and less enthusiastic drivers increasingly buy EVs.

Insufficient home charging infrastructure is, for obvious reasons, worse for residents living in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs). Though CEJA and other programs across the country do provide rebates for the cost of installing or purchasing EV charging equipment, they often don’t do enough to solve the fundamental split-incentive problem that apartment-dwellers face: even if they want to buy and drive an EV, their landlords may simply not care to install charging stations (assuming they provide parking) because it doesn’t benefit them.

A rebate, especially a rebate that covers only equipment and installation costs – like the federal tax rebate of up to 30% – is not usually enough to solve this problem. Installing EV chargers in parking lots attached to old buildings often requires major and expensive upgrades to the existing electrical infrastructure, and these costs are often 1) bigger than installation or equipment costs and 2) not recuperable by the incentive programs. Consequently, landlords and management companies simply don’t see installing EV chargers as a good investment. In fact, according to a workshop that surveyed landlords and management companies, “installing EV charging is perceived as a costly, time-intensive process that is not worth the hassle to service non-existent resident demand.” And, unfortunately, nearly all of the existing incentives are structured like the federal rebate.

Still, “increasing home charging access will speed up EV adoption, which is vital for decarbonizing our roads. By considering insights in behavioral psychology, incentives can be improved.

Incentives that only allow costs to be recovered after the fact run into a problem with loss aversion – a cognitive bias that makes it so that people feel significantly worse about losing something than gaining the equivalent amount, including money. Instead of reimbursing for spending, a more effective way to induce people to actually spend money to install charging equipment is to distribute grants or, even better, target installation professionals. If an incentive could pay electricians directly to reduce prices for consumers, that makes it easy for landlords to find someone to do the installation while also reducing sticker shock. Programs that work directly with electricians could rely on those professionals to advertise the incentive because it makes them money – the electrician gets paid, the landlord gets EV chargers installed, the tenants get home charging access, and the program serves its intended purpose. Plus, if an electrician or contractor is already needed for some reason, the landlord has already accounted for the hassle of doing construction, and a cheap-enough upgrade that raises the value of their building and is a value-add to potential tenants may be a much easier sell.

A program like this would not be as straightforward or as cheap as strict reimbursement, but we have to aim our sights high; emissions push upwards every year, and we do not have time to spare. To get a million EVs onto Illinois roads in the next decade – and to do so equitably, acknowledging the very real advantages that wealth provides in adapting to a carbon-minimized lifestyle – we must pull out all the stops. We need to make the smartest possible implementation choices to push the world off its disastrous business-as-usual course.