Hundreds of millions of dollars that the Biden administration directed to local electric vehicle charging projects have mostly gone to large cities that tend to vote Democratic and not rural and Republican areas, according to a new study.
The study by data firm CivicPulse doesn’t attribute the skewed spending from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law to bias by government officials. Instead, it concludes that local governments in conservative rural areas have little experience and exposure to EV charging and so don’t feel capable of applying in the first place.
“The No. 1 barrier is not political opposition,” said Nathan Lee, CivicPulse founder and report lead author, who served as a climate adviser in the Department of Energy and the National Economic Council during the Obama administration.
“The No. 1 barrier is technical,” he added.
