Electric Vehicles

The Office of Resilience & Sustainability has been working towards supporting the city’s climate strategy, Climate Action for a Resilient New Orleans, which calls for the city to “expand access to clean fuel and electric vehicles.” This initiative is a multi-agency endeavor that is delivering on multiple projects.

Electric Vehicle Charging Pilot Program

The City recently partnered with Entergy New Orleans to launch a pilot program providing free electric vehicle charging stations for public use. Entergy installed 30 charging stations across 25 locations in New Orleans, including NORD facilities, libraries, and public parks.

As of September 2023, all the stations are up and running and ready for the community to use. This initiative increases access to EV charging for residents and visitors alike.

New Orleans Electric Vehicle (NOEV) Steering Committee

In 2020, the City of New Orleans founded the New Orleans Electric Vehicle Steering Committee to guide the partnership with Entergy New Orleans for the transition to electric vehicles.

The Committee included six members:

Councilmember At-Large Helena Moreno or representative Andrew Tuozzolo
Councilmember At-Large Jason Williams or representative
City Council Transportation Committee Chair Councilmember Kristin Palmer or representative
Southeast Louisiana Clean Fuels Partnership Coordinator from Regional Planning Commission, Courtney Young or representative
EV-LA representative Dan Weiner, Wisznia Architects
Industry representative Jackie Dadakis, Green Coast Enterprises

Site Selection

Entergy New Orleans and the City facilitated an online survey from January 2021 to March 2021 to gather input from residents on potential site locations and general electric vehicle adoption. The survey provided 525 potential site locations suggested by the public, as well as sites that correlated with libraries, other city buildings, or NORD sites with restroom facilities. As part of the survey, the public was able to “upvote” or “downvote” each location.

The NOEV Steering Committee developed a scoring criteria that included five factors:

City Owned: If the city owned the property where the site location was placed, a point was added to the overall score.
Flood Zone: If the site fell within an AE or VE Flood Zone as determined by FEMA, then the site received an additional point.
Poverty: If the site fell within a census tract where the average income was below 80% AMI, then the site received an additional point. The average income was derived from the ACS 2019 five-year estimates. The 80% AMI value of $39,450 was released by the City’s Office of Economic Development as part of their first-time homebuyer program.
Environmental Risk: The potential exposure to environmental risk that includes air, water, soil, etc. is calculated from the Environmental Health Hazard Exposure Index, a dataset released by the US Department of Housing. This dataset assigns a number to a census tract based on the overall risk between 1-100, whereby the closer to 100, the less risk exists. The average value attributed to all New Orleans census tracts was 32.22. Any census tracts below that average received a point.
Survey Votes: The public survey remained one of the most valuable scoring criteria as those values came directly from members of the public. As such, a scale was developed to add additional points to locations that had a higher vote. The number of “upvotes” and “downvotes” were added together to determine the total number of votes per site.

In total, a score for the 525 sites was calculated based on the criteria above ranging from one to six. A total of four locations received a high score of six, 29 locations received a score of five, 82 locations received a score of four and the remainder of the sites scored three or below.

Electric Vehicle Charging Grant Award

New Orleans is a recipient of $95,000 from the VW Settlement through the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ). The funding will be used for one fast charger located at Washington Square Park.

City Fleet Transition

The Office of Resilience & Sustianability has been working with Equipment Maintenance Division (EMD) to begin the process to transition the City’s fleet to alternative fuels as stipulated by City Council Ordinance 33,592. This resulted in the publicaiton in November 2023 of the Fleet Transition Plan, laying out a vehicle transition plan consistent with City Ordinance and the City's Climate Action Plan.

Funding Opportunities

There are new opportunities for EV charging infrastructure made available through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). On February 10, 2022, The Biden Administration announced $5 billion over five years to help states create a network of EV charging stations along alternative fuel corridors under a new program, National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program (NEVI). The city, through the IIJA Task Force, is coordinating with the state DOTD on the NEVI funding to determine how dollars could help facilitate EV charging in New Orleans.

Tax Credits

Purchasers of new electric vehicles may be eligible for a federal income tax credit up to $7,500. The purchase must be made after 2010, and the credit is based on each manufacturer and begins to max out after selling 200,000 qualified vehicles. Check the fueleconomy.gov website to see which manufacturers are eligible.