By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
The work progressed Tuesday night to make carbon emissions in Los Alamos a thing of the past after Los Alamos County Council approved 6-0 to accept the fleet conversion plan.
The plan lays out how the County will replace its gas-fueled vehicles with electric vehicles (EV) by 2050. Council shared their support for the plan although Councilor David Reagor was absent from the meeting.
Analy Castillo with Stantec, a County-hired contractor, discussed what was involved in the fleet conversion plan.
“The main goal for this is to have a pathway for Los Alamos County fleet to transition to zero emission technologies,” she said.
“To do so we evaluated all the operations of the County fleet and we compared different strategies for that transition.”
One strategy, Castillo said, is to do what the County is currently doing, which is outlined in the existing EV policy. The EV policy calls for converting two County vehicles to electric each year. If the County continues to follow the EV policy, then 31 percent of its fleet would be electric by 2050. Another strategy is to pursue the Climate Action Plan (CAP) policy, which proposes to contribute directly to the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050 with having 86 percent of the County’s fleet being electric.
Castillo said neither show reaching 100 percent because certain vehicles are classified as an exception to being electric.
To assess which policy is feasible, Castillo said several criteria were considered.
Financially, the CAP policy is more expensive, she said.
Regarding the environmental impact, Castillo said in general the EV policy will save about 9.5 percent of the cumulative emissions while the CAP policy achieves three times that.
“Once you have reached that transition in 2050, the emissions per year are significantly lower for the CAP policy compared to the EV policy,” she said. “It is quite a significant impact to the carbon neutrality goals as well as the benefits it brings to air quality and emissions overall.”
In assessing what the EV transition would look like as well as the power capacity and energy requirements, Castillo said the EV policy does have peak usage, but the CAP policy is projected to require significant power at each EV location.
“What’s great about this information is it allows for some of the early engagement and planning to make sure the power is available and that there is some proactive planning for the … capacity and implementation of the chargers,” she said.
Implementing the fleet conversion would be done in phases and the first phase includes a detailed timeline suggested for the EV infrastructure. Castillo added that the vehicles easiest to switch out without effecting operations are given highest priority and the conversion is centralized by site. The County sites in phase 1 include, among other locations, the Municipal Building, the Justice Center, Mesa Public Library, the Eco Station, Fuller Lodge, Betty Ehart Senior Center, White Rock Fire Station #3, White Rock Visitor Center and White Rock Senior Center.
Castillo further noted that the County has an interactive dashboard that can be modified based on changing variables.
“Having that dynamic tool is also going to ensure the County has the ability to plan at its own pace and implement at its own pace based on the success of implementation as well as funding and operation of the facility that they are serving,” she said.
The key takeaways from Castillo’s presentation are that the CAP policy supports Los Alamos County’s Climate Action Plan and explores alignment with 100 percent carbon neutrality goals by 2050.
The complementary phased charging infrastructure plan, workforce training and strong funding strategies will be paramount for successful implementation.
However, it will be critical to implement proactive fund-seeking strategies to maintain fiscal responsibility during this plan’s implementation
As far as first steps toward implementation, Castillo said the Council will need to decide which policy to adopt.
The County will also need to evaluate use and demand of current chargers. An assessment of the fleet’s operational costs will be done on an ongoing basis.
“This is a living document and all this information or assumptions are encouraged to be revised … at least every five years not only to make sure their assumptions are holding, but also that they haven’t had some significant or impactful changes to the technology and the market in general,” Castillo said.
Furthermore, she said that the County should coordinate with other infrastructure improvements, create a master plan for all facilities to align timelines and required capital and coordinate with utilities for available power capacity and site modifications.
Councilor Suzie Havemann wondered if the fleet conversion plan was too conservative and if it weighed too heavily on the assumption that EVs will be expensive.
Castillo said the conversion plan is conservative for a reason.
“…we have to be more cautious about … making sure we have the correct funding to go after and start something that we know we can complete and … this is a living document. In the next 3,5 years we might see way bigger trends that are going to ease constraints on the funding but if that doesn’t happen then at least you are prepared for the worst-case scenario.”
She commended Sustainability Manager Angelica Gurule for securing funding and being proactive about funding.
Gurule added that the numbers are based on the data that is available. She said that the numbers were kept conservative and assumed that the County would be responsible for maintenance as well as building EV infrastructure.
“We wanted to give the truest, most conservative costs so we would all have that data and numbers … actual bottom line numbers … we took an extremely conservative approach with maintenance and we hear from actual EV owners that it is a lot less expensive to own and operate an EV but we have only limited data with our fleet – what we own and operate today with our fleet and what we’ve seen is a 9 percent reduction in maintenance …,” Gurule said.
Gurule added that the County will continue to track numbers.