Development of the EEZ Mobility Tool to Guide the Equitable Installation of Public Charging Stations

Research Team: Scott Moura (lead), Marta Gonzalez, Preston Hong, Ayse Tug Ozturk

UC Campus(es): UC Berkeley

Problem Statement: Public electric vehicle (EV) chargers are unevenly distributed in California with respect to income, race, and education-levels. This creates inequitable access to electric mobility. Programs exist in California that provide incentives for public EV chargers in “disadvantaged communities” yet the process for identifying these communities does not consider key characteristics such as housing type, potential for local emission reduction, and the degree of access to private chargers that would maximize economic benefits to these areas and to the state.

Project Description: This study developed a model-based tool called EEZ Mobility that incorporates key additional information to predict economic benefits and health impacts to local communities to guide the location of public charging infrastructure. The tool uses data from CalEnviroScreen—an analytical tool that can be used to identify communities that face pollution and socioeconomic disadvantage—in conjunction with census data, currently available charging infrastructure locations, PEV ownership rates, public transit availability, and commute patterns to robustly quantify the impact of increasing public charging infrastructure. This tool helps to improve the equitable distribution of public funds by identifying three types of expected benefits: economic benefit to EV owners/users, economic benefit to infrastructure operators, and greenhouse gas and PM2.5 emission reductions.

Status: Completed

Budget: $80,000