Massachusetts' secretary of energy and environmental affairs, Richard K. Sullivan Jr., has announced that 105 electric-vehicle (EV) charging stations will be awarded to 25 cities and towns across the commonwealth.
The following communities are receiving charging stations, which will be sited on downtown streets, parking garages, shopping malls, schools and colleges, and commercial, medical and industrial parks: Athol, Barnstable, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Falmouth, Greenfield, Hanover, Holyoke, Hopkinton, Kingston, Lancaster, Lenox, Lexington, Lowell, Nantucket, New Bedford, New Salem, Newton, Northampton, Orange, Salem, Tyngsboro and Worcester.
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources invited cities and towns to apply for EV charging equipment grants, funded with approximately $280,000 made available through a settlement obtained by Attorney General Martha Coakley's office in 2007 for alleged pollution control equipment violations by an Ohio-based power plant.
That funding was subsequently augmented through a public-private partnership with Coulomb Technologies of California, which received a U.S. Department of Energy American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant to provide installation of electric charging equipment and re-granted the awards in the form of charging stations to Massachusetts cities and towns through the company's ChargePoint America program.
The commonwealth will also be installing additional charging stations, separate from these municipal installations, at Logan Airport garages, Logan Express parking lots and at MBTA commuter parking locations.
“The governor and lieutenant governor have recognized the chicken-and-egg dilemma: that if individuals are to be comfortable purchasing electric vehicles, they must also be assured that there are available charging stations for these vehicles,” says Hank Manz, chairman of the Lexington Board of Selectmen. “Lexington, with the thousands of high-tech employees who work in our business parks and the significant number of tourists who visit our historic sites year-round, is a natural location for electric-vehicle charging stations.”
