The fossil fuel industry is cashing in on the $7.5 billion for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations that President Joe Biden approved in the Inflation Reduction Act, lobbying to have the stations built at existing gas station locations.
Politico‘s Energy & Environment News reported:
More than half of the charging stations being built so far from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law are rising at truck stops and gasoline stations, according to data exclusively provided to E&E News by EVAdoption, an EV data consultancy. In essence, the law’s $7.5 billion pot for charging is reinforcing the very fossil-fuel infrastructure that the EV era would seem to consign to oblivion.
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Service stations have an upper hand in this first wave of subsidies because they occupy the very real estate where the federal government wants to build a charging backbone: at 50-mile intervals along the interstates and no more than a mile from highway exits.
But that’s not the only reason. Behind the scenes, service-station industry lobbyists have been working to tilt the rules to their advantage.
Environmental groups are not criticizing the fossil fuel industry for lobbying for their share of the cash, because they are happy to see the EV stations built — though none were built by the end of 2023, and few have been built since.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
