Director Benner Joins Environment Oregon for Event Supporting Electric Vehicles
This morning, Oregon Department of Energy Director Janine Benner joined Environment Oregon, Lane Transit District, and others to show support for electric vehicles, buses, and infrastructure in our state.
Oregon has ambitious EV goals — and with even more EV options coming out each year, now is the time to invest in EV infrastructure. ODOE and our partner State agencies are all-in on EVs. Learn more about ODOE’s work on our website, and head to Go Electric Oregon to find more info on EVs, charging, and available incentives.
You can watch a recording of the event on Environment Oregon’s Facebook page, and read Director Benner’s remarks below:
ODOE Director Janine Benner got an opportunity to sit in the driver’s seat in one of Lane Transit District’s electric buses.
Good morning, my name is Janine Benner, and I’m the Director of the Oregon Department of Energy. At the Department of Energy, we know climate change is the challenge of our generation. We are already seeing its effects – from the wildfires that are burning our state once again this summer, to extreme weather events like last month’s heat wave and the historic ice storms just a few months earlier.
About 40 percent of Oregon’s harmful greenhouse gas pollution comes from the transportation sector – and almost all of that comes from gasoline and diesel. In order to make progress on our climate change goals, we must move toward cleaner alternative fuels, like electricity.
But investing in cleaner vehicles isn’t just important for climate change, it’s also good for public health and cleaner air and water. And it’s also good for our economy – from electric vehicle manufacturing and infrastructure jobs, to the fuel itself. In fact, in our most recent Biennial Energy Report, we calculated that Oregonians send about 5.4 billion of our transportation dollars each year to other states and countries where extraction, processing, and refining of transportation fuels occurs. $5.4 billion a year. Wouldn’t it be great to keep that money in our state?
Here’s the good news – in Oregon, we have an abundance of home-grown renewable energy – from hydropower to solar to wind. Some communities– including right here in the Eugene-Springfield area – have electric utilities that provide nearly 100 percent clean, renewable energy already. That means the electric car I drove here in runs with no tailpipe pollution and with little to no pollution from the electricity needed to charge its battery.
Just a decade ago, Oregon had fewer than 700 electric vehicles on our roads. Now, we have more than 36,000 and the numbers are growing! But we have to go faster. The state has set some ambitious goals on transportation electrification – we want at least 250,000 EVs on Oregon roads by 2025, and for 90 percent of all new car sales to be zero emission vehicles by 2035.
We also want to transition our school and transit buses to electric. On this, my agency is working alongside agency partners, like the Oregon Department of Transportation, to support school districts and transit agencies with the tools they need to make the switch to electric.
All these new electric vehicle options are exciting, and they will need places to charge. Earlier this month, ODOT published a study on Oregon’s charging infrastructure needs, and found that over the next four years, we’ll need five times the number of public charging ports we have today. And by 2035, we’ll need 44 times the number of public charging ports.
Oregon’s utilities, electric vehicle advocates, schools, transit districts, drivers, and lawmakers are investing in our clean vehicle future. But we need help from the federal government on the transition. Now is the time to invest in the infrastructure that can reduce pollution, save Oregonians money, and provide drivers with cleaner options. In Oregon we are lucky to have Representative Peter DeFazio leading the charge in Congress on this.
Thanks so much to Environment Oregon for hosting this event and to everyone involved for your hard work on this issue.
ODOE Director Janine Benner speaks at the Environment Oregon EV event.