Public charging stations are most heavily concentrated in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods, creating a chicken/egg scenario for electric car adoption
While electric vehicles are relatively uncommon in Chicago, city officials expect their popularity to grow dramatically in coming decades.
And while electric cars are registered throughout the city, they, along with the city’s charging stations, are most heavily concentrated in the city’s affluent and mostly white North Side. As of 2018, 70% of all public charging stations were located in just three community areas. By contrast, 47 of Chicago’s 77 community areas, largely on the city’s South Side and West Side, had no public charging stations at all.
While advocates in Illinois were optimistic that a series of measures reforming the state s energy landscape could pass in 2019, various factors caused the legislative package to stall while most of Gov. JB Pritzker s first-year agenda eventually became law. At the time, advocates behind the Path to 100 Act warned of an impending funding cliff for renewable energy projects if the General Assembly did not act to increase the rate cap on ratepayer bills, which is the funding source of the renewable energy fund overseen by the Illinois Power Agency. Now, amid a backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, an ongoing scandal ensnaring the state s largest utility and a potential upheaval of leadership in the Illinois House, the lawmakers pushing for that bill say the funding cliff has arrived.