BY: JEFF BEACH
BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – Weeks after Gov. Doug Burgum bashed electric vehicles, the North Dakota Industrial Commission has approved funding to study EV infrastructure.
In April, the commission asked for more information from the Energy and Environmental Resource Center after it requested $375,000 for a multi-state plan.
Charlie Gorecki, CEO of the Energy and Environmental Resource Center, returned to the commission last week for its May meeting.
Burgum on Tuesday continued to criticize federal policy on EVs but did vote in favor of the funding along with the commission’s other members, Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring.
The $375,000 is a 20% match to a $1.5 million federal grant from the Department of Energy for the Regional Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Resilience Plan.
The state’s share comes from its Renewable Energy Fund.
Federal funding also is helping pay for electric school buses for some North Dakota schools.
Gorecki said EERC, which is based at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, is leading the project, which also includes Minnesota, Montana and South Dakota.
All the money would be spent in North Dakota, Gorecki said.
Gorecki said the regional plan would be a way to assess Burgum’s concerns about EVs not working in the cold and the resilience of the region’s electric grid.
“Weather is absolutely one of the aspects” of the plan, Gorecki said.
He said information is needed to plan for extreme cold and storms that can hinder EV travel. “We can’t have cars stalled out all over across our state,” Gorecki said.
It will also look at how EVs affect energy demand, especially at peak times. It would look at the possibility of needing to curtail energy output at charging stations during high demand times.
Burgum said “We need to protect ourselves from really bad policy ideas.”
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