The federal program for building a national network of electric vehicle charging stations is running again after a six-month pause.
But momentum for EV charging in the Pittsburgh area will continue with or without the program, as businesses look to serve customers with convenient refueling locations.
The Trump administration halted the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program in February, saying it needed to be updated to align with current policy and priorities.
The roll out of the NEVI program had been slow, attracting critiques of being inefficient. Of the six projects awarded in Allegheny County, only one is complete.
The Biden administration set requirements to try to ensure that chargers would benefit disadvantaged communities and minority-owned businesses and be spaced evenly along major highways.
Now the Trump administration has thrown out those conditions.
- Trump administration reluctantly resumes funding for EV chargers
- Electric vehicle owners in Pa. will need to pay an extra fee starting in 2025
Ryan McKinnon with the Charge Ahead Partnership, a business group, said he’s cautiously optimistic about the new guidance.
“Eliminating a million requirements that made it impossible for states to implement the program is overall good for clean energy,” McKinnon said.
He added that, while public funding is helpful, most charging is being driven by the private sector.
That’s true for Southwestern Pennsylvania, according to Sarah Olexsak, general manager of electrification solutions for Duquesne Light Company.
“When we think about what’s driving the growth of public charging stations in the Pittsburgh region it’s really being driven by our commercial customers,” Olexsak said.
Olexsak said small businesses are looking to build chargers as a way to attract customers. She also credited municipalities with building charging stations to serve their residents and visitors.
DLC offers a program through which it covers the cost of engineering and construction to ready a site for a charging station. The commercial customer then installs the charger, agrees to maintain it, and pays for the electricity to power it.
Olexsak said the utility has helped install more than 350 charging ports at 50 locations to date and has another 100 ports planned at ten sites.
However, Olexsak said incentives will remain important for encouraging future charging infrastructure to meet projected needs.
“Today we have about 700 public level two charging station ports in our territory. To support the number of EVs on the road in 2030, we still need to increase that by over six fold,” she said.
The number of EVs in the Pittsburgh region is expected to grow from 18,000 today to 50,000 by 2030, Olexsak said.
Pennsylvania has been at the front of the pack in contracting charging sites through NEVI. The state has obligated 90 projects, with 18 of them operational.
PennDOT spokesperson Zachary Appleby said the new federal guidance will have no effect on the previously contracted projects.
“Pennsylvania achieved full buildout of its Alternative Fuel Corridor in January 2025 and has been ready to move forward into the next stages of the NEVI program, but without federal guidelines, we were unable to move forward as quickly as we could have,” Appleby said.
Initial NEVI-funded chargers were placed in 50-mile intervals along major highways. The next phase of NEVI funding is slated to build community-focused charging stations.
Matt Stephens-Rich with the Electrification Coalition said NEVI-backed sites create a “core backbone of charging” that can support a larger network spread on secondary roads and in towns.
He said Pennsylvania’s plan for NEVI funds has acted as a market indicator, encouraging businesses to install their own chargers.
“ We still have a lot more to go as we continue to grow the EV market across America and also growing the charging to meet it,” Stephens-Rich said “We do expect to see additional private dollars also coming in as the market continues to grow and expand.”
