The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) with Louisiana Clean Fuels (LCF) recently submitted the State Plan for EV Infrastructure to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.
This plan is a requirement of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure formula funding that will dedicate $5 billion dollars to EV Infrastructure across the country over the next 5 years. Louisiana’s portion of this budget is approximately $75 million.
The plan works to create electric vehicle charging corridors throughout the interstate and highway systems of Louisiana locating DC Fast Chargers a minimum of 50 miles apart for EV owners to utilize. To do this, anywhere from 75-190 new charging stations (with a minimum of 4 chargers at each station) will be implemented throughout the state.
With the unprecedented influx of fast charger installations coming to states across the country over the next 5 years, a new specialized field of jobs will be created. A trained workforce will be needed to manage design, installation, operation, and maintenance of the electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) and technology. To determine the economic impact of our newly published state Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Plan, we utilized a tool created by the Argonne National Laboratories, EVSE JOBS 1.0, to calculate how many jobs would be created in Louisiana as a direct result of the federal funding being infused into our state’s economy over the next 10 years.
The model calculates how many jobs will be needed in the supply chain for charging station operation, transformer and panel creation, and implementation – represented by the furthest right two hexagons in the figure below. The other elements of the supply chain for EVSE jobs are not calculated because the energy utility companies currently claim that there is enough capacity in the infrastructure to support the growing need over the next 10 years. Therefore, the further upstream elements of the supply chain will not be as impacted by the upcoming influx of EVs in terms of job creation. The average salary of an EVSE technician is approximately $80,000 according to statistics collected by The Mobilist, illustrating that EVs are ushering in a new wave of well-paying jobs.
Two scenarios of the NEVI State Plan were developed to reflect budgetary constraints such as volatility in equipment and materials costs. The first plan accounts for 75 charging station sites, each with 4 ports, totaling 300 DCFC charging ports. Using this information, along with the understanding that there are currently 22 already developed DC Fast charging stations, it can be deduced that 266 new EVSE jobs will be created by 2027. The second scenario in the Louisiana NEVI plan accounts for 190 DCFC stations across the state. Under these assumptions, 684 new EVSE jobs would likely be created in the same time frame.
These calculations only account for the DC fast charging stations that will be produced in the next 5 years and do not look at the level 1 or 2 chargers that will be needed throughout the community to further support the EV owners.
According to a report produced for DOTD by the Center of Sustainable Energy, it is projected that EV registrations in Louisiana will grow to 64,007 BEVs in 2030. Using the AFDC EVI-Pro Lite tool, we ran an analysis to determine the number of DC Fast Chargers that will be needed to support those vehicles. The result of the analysis is that Louisiana will need to have at least 2,675 level 2 chargers and 214 DCFC ports. Currently Louisiana has 278 ports for level 2 charging and 103 DCFC ports. To reach these goals by 2030, Louisiana will create 5,210 new EVSE jobs.
Jumping forward only 2 years, it is expected that Louisiana will host 81,957 EVs and therefore require more Level 2 and DCFC charging stations. This will lead to the creation of 9,772 new EVSE jobs by 2032.
From the Executive Director:
The question is now, does our state currently have an adequately trained workforce to support the forthcoming demand? While we do not have definitive data on the current number of EVSE installers in our state, we do know that our stakeholders have reported difficulty in finding installers and maintenance crews with the demand we currently have. So here is our challenge – to develop job training programs here in Louisiana to ensure that we not only have a workforce that is ready to take on these new jobs, but to also ensure that EVSE companies do not have to bring in workers from outside of our state to fill those positions. If we do this the right way, we can create a well-paid and skilled local workforce that will be in high demand and correspondingly can uplift the communities in which they live. – Ann Vail
