The city of Jackson, Wyoming, which is among the wealthiest in America, has received a $5.5 million grant from the federal government to expand its network of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations.
No other city in the Cowboy State was mentioned in Tuesday’s announcement from the Biden administration.
Jackson, along with regional partners in Teton County in northwestern Wyoming, will receive the grant as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s $2.5 billion charging and fueling infrastructure program and a 10% set-aside from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program.
Wyoming is lacking EV charging stations in one of the busiest areas of Wyoming, especially for Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park that attracted nearly 8 million visitors last year, according to the National Park Service.
There are 261 electric vehicle charging ports in Wyoming, or 0.55% of the 47,014 chargers nationwide, according to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Jackson spokesman Aaron Carrillo could not immediately comment on the grant issued to his city.
The grant is part of a larger $521 million pool of money that the Biden administration awarded to governmental entities across 29 states to build 9,200 EV charging ports.
The state of Wyoming, which also is chasing after funding from the government’s NEVI program, wasn’t a recipient of any of this money.
While EV registrations are up in the Cowboy State, the Wyoming Department of Transportation is slowly coming around to procurement plans to find partners to build out an infrastructure of charging stations along Interstates 80, 25 and 90.
Jackson Is Different
This effort is different than Jackson’s.
The Teton County city is among the wealthiest in the nation and can afford the price tag of an EV, where the highest concentrations of these electric vehicles are found in Wyoming.
A Tesla, for instance, can be priced as low as $38,990 or as high as $113,630 in 2024, depending on the model and added features.
With WYDOT, the state agency is moving forward with plans to build out an infrastructure of charging stations along major interstates in the Cowboy State.
WYDOT is expected to issue a request for proposals for help with that federal initiative in early 2025, said Jordan Young, a spokeswoman for the state transportation agency.
Wyoming is experiencing some EV growth, albeit not enough to push it up from its ranking of having the second least number of registrations in the United States.
North Dakota was at the bottom with 876 EV registrations in 2023, a growth of 276 registrations from 2022.
North Dakota is in the cellar, but Wyoming is next to the bottom.
The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, along with data pulled from credit rating agency Experian, said Wyoming had 1,080 electric vehicle registrations in 2023, up from 800 the previous year.
That’s not enough to move the needle. The 1,080 EVs in Wyoming represents 0.03% of the total 3.3 million EVs registered in all of 2023.
Wyoming Moving Slowly
Earlier this month, Wyoming said that it is continuing to move forward with its plans for electric charging stations, a move that could stimulate the market further.
WYDOT’s request for proposals to build electric charging stations along Wyoming’s major interstates will be published in early 2025.
HDR Inc., a consultant hired by WYDOT, is helping draft the RFP.
Wyoming is no further behind than other states in the arduous process to build out a federal network of charging stations.
The state’s forthcoming RFP in early 2025 would be the first one issued in Wyoming and would provide about $26.8 million to help build a network of 26 charging stations in the state.
WYDOT is working with the Federal Highway Administration’s NEVI program, which has offered federal funds as part of a national plan from the Biden administration to build charging stations along interstate corridors.
Earlier this year, WYDOT moved forward with its proposed plans to build charging stations, even though nothing has yet been built and solicitations to bring on board contractors for a statewide charging network haven’t yet happened.
The NEVI program requires a 20% match from private businesses, which would build and operate the stations.
The feds would kick in money to support the stations’ operations for up to five years. The program required no state money.
WYDOT plans to make additional requests to the 50-mile and 1-mile requirements in the NEVI rules.
To date, the only exemption approved by the NEVI program in Wyoming has been a 50-mile exemption on I-90 between Buffalo and Gillette.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
