Amazon Inc.’s commitment to electric vehicles might make headlines on Wall Street, but the company’s hub in Racine County is becoming where the rubber meets the road. Amazon has won approval from the Village of Yorkville to install almost 400 new electric-vehicle charging stations at its delivery center in the Grandview Business Park overlooking Interstate 94. This would be a significant change in EV charging infrastructure in the state. According to tracking from EV Adoption, as of September 2021, Wisconsin still had fewer than 900 total charging ports in the state and fewer than 15,500 electric vehicles. Plans submitted to the village indicate that Amazon could have its eye on a system ultimately capable of charging as many as 760 electric vehicles.

WisDOT is estimated to receive approximately $78.65 million over the next five years under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. Today most EV charging is accomplished at home. To support long distance trips and overcome range anxiety, these dollars will be used to fund a network of publicly accessible charging stations along Wisconsin’s Alternative Fuel Corridors. To meet this goal, WisDOT kicked off both a statewide transportation electrification planning study (January 2022) and more recently the federally required Wisconsin Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (WEVI) Plan development process (March 2022). WisDOT hosted multiple Webinars in May and June as part of its public engagement strategy portion of the program and is continuing to receive public comment on the program as well.

Komatsu Mining has officially opened its new $285 million corporate offices and manufacturing plant in Milwaukee's Harbor District on E.Greenfield Ave. The Japan-based company is planning to be part of the expected shift to more renewable energy and electric vehicles. Komatsu says it still has production workers at the facility it bought six years ago from P&H/Joy Global at the border of Milwaukee and West Milwaukee, near the Zablocki VA. But that older site will eventually be vacated and possibly sold for re-development. Financial incentives from the city of Milwaukee and State of Wisconsin helped clean up a former EPA Superfund site to build the new harbor campus.

Much of the fossil fuel industry continued to hemorrhage jobs last year, even as employment in the electric car sector increased dramatically, according to a report this week from the Department of Energy. The 2022 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER) is compiled annually using public labor statistics and analyzes virtually every established energy sector, from energy efficiency and electric power generation to motor vehicles, fuels production and transmission, distribution and storage. This year’s report considered how the nation’s energy workforces fared in 2021 and found that most of them grew at a modest clip: Overall, energy sector jobs were up 4 percent, with electric vehicles being a standout. Employment in the electric car sector exploded 26 percent, while jobs related to hybrid cars rose 20 percent. In comparison, electric vehicle jobs grew only 8 percent in the prior year’s report.

The program guidance and a list of eligible/prioritized applicants are now posted on the Clean School Bus Program website. Authorized by the recently signed Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, EPA’s Clean School Bus Program provides $5 billion over the next five years to replace school buses with low- and zero-emission school buses. The first funding opportunity under this program will be the 2022 Clean School Bus Rebates. EPA will offer $500 million for zero-emission and clean school bus rebates. More information is available on the U.S. EPA Clean School Bus Website

One of the downsides of living in an age of advanced technology is information overload. We all have information right at our fingertips in our cell phones at any given time. With every new announcement coming over as a breaking news push alert, text or email, it can be difficult to tell what is truly worth our attention at any given time.

To add to the confusion, it can feel at times like we’re drowning in the alphabet soup of acronyms for all of the local, state and federal agencies and their programs. It’s hard to keep it all straight, even for those of us who are actively involved in the process. Take for example the U.S. DOT/FHWA/DOE NEVI program and the WisDOT WEVI plan. Have I lost you yet?

CMD Alternative Energy Solutions -- headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin -- became a Wisconsin Clean Cities member in 2015. Business Development Manager Brad Schmoll serves on the Wisconsin Clean Cities Board of Directors and is a member of its Executive Board. CMD Alternative Energy Solutions was founded in 2011 as a division of CMD Corporation – an established industrial equipment supplier in Appleton, WI founded in 1980. Anyone who knows CMD Alternative Energy Solutions knows that the company is passionately technical. Using its substantial technical bench to solve problems is what they do best.

Hydrogen (H2) is a potentially emission-free alternative fuel that can be produced using domestic resources. Although not widely used as a transportation fuel, government and industry researchers are working on the advancement of clean economical and safe hydrogen production and fuel-cell electric vehicles. Hydrogen is locked up in enormous quantities in water (H2O), hydrocarbons (such as methane, CH4) and other organic matter. Efficiently producing hydrogen from these compounds is one of the challenges of using hydrogen as a fuel.