Energy Efficiency  -  January 7, 2021

City of Madison adopts new EV requirements

The City of Madison, Wisconsin, announced on Jan. 5 that it adopted new requirements to advance EV charging. The new ordinance requires at least 10% of newly-constructed parking for multifamily residential, and some commercial uses to be “EV ready,” meaning having infrastructure in place to easily add EV chargers in the future. Also, 2% of residential stalls and 1% of commercial stalls must have EV charging installed and available for use. The ordinance includes a schedule to increase the percentage of EV-ready and EV-installed parking every five years.

This legislation will help Madison residents who are renters overcome a key barrier to owning an electric vehicle: reliable access to charging.

“We’ve heard of numerous examples where building owners have installed EV chargers, and then quickly saw residents convert to electric vehicles,” city council member Alder Abbas said in a statement. “This is part of an ‘if you build it, they will come’ philosophy, and it’s imperative that we take such a common-sense approach to reducing our carbon emissions.”

Nearly 41% of Madison’s emissions come from cars. The city has a goal of communitywide net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Experts say the city must nearly cut its emissions in half by 2030 to avoid destabilizing the climate.

“If we are serious about achieving our climate goals in Madison, we have to transition to clean technology and build a city that embraces it,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, who co-sponsored the ordinance said in the same statement. “We must ensure that new developments in Madison are built for the 21st century, and this legislation helps to do that.”

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