SEVA Meeting Minutes – February 2015

SEVA Meeting Minutes:  Feb 10 2015, Stephen Johnsen called the meeting to order at 7:05 pm, 48 in attendance.

BOARD Mark Yormark and Mark Schiller were unanimously elected for another two year term as Treasurer and Vice President respectively.  They were the only candidates.

EV OF THE MONTH – Home built 1996 Honda Del Sol, pack sized for 50 mile round trip to work, ceramic heater, 40 cell 130 Ahr calb (20kWhr) batteries, warp 9 motor, PNS 500 (open source controller)

Grace Stiller from Newcastle Earth Day gave a pitch for Earth Day and SEVA’s continued attendance at this event.

CITIZENS CLIMATE LOBBY – Ann Angstrom(?) focusing on how to solve climate change at the national level.  Conference on March 7 and 8 at the Northgate Community Center.

CARBON WA – Duncan Clauson is promoting a carbon tax for the state of Washington that is revenue neutral and is patterned after the tax in British Columbia Canada.  $0.25/gallon of gas.  Doing an initiative to the legislature in 2016.

• LEGISLATIVE AGENDA – Mark Schiller gave an overview of the current legislative EV related bills. There are about 12 Bills:
  SB5445/HB1925 – Extending the sales tax exemption for EVs which otherwise expires this year.  Bill would exempt the first $60k of sales tax.
• SB5333 is similar but would only exempt the first $45k of the sales tax with the remainder of the sales tax above this to go to an EV infrastructure bank.
• WSDOT budget, HB1299/SB5360, adds $1.5M for fast chargers along the I-90 corridor.
• SB5444/HB1572 – bill establishes the EV infrastructure bank, establishes the fund.
• SB5358/HB1300 – expands $100 EV fee to apply to ALL plug-in electric vehicles including PHEVs like the Chevy Volt.  All these monies would go to the EV Infrastructure Bank.
• HB1929/SB5446 – bill relating to adopting incentives for building owners to install “fast charging” along major roadways.
• HB1487/SB5423 – adopts the ZEV mandate.
• SB5357 – bill lowers $100 EV fee to $25 for electric motorcycles and exempts sales tax up to $45k.
• HB1396/SB5325 – exempts some level of B&O tax, sales tax and utility tax bills for commercial fleets.
• HB1300/SB5358 – bill provides credits for EVs on ferries, HOT lane tolls, and bridge tolls.
• SB5735 – bill to enhance I-937 which relates to windfarms and would allow utilities to use installing EV charging infrastructure to help them meet their I-937 mandates.
• HB1853 – allows electric utilities to install EV infrastructure in homes and businesses with ratepayer dollars and earn a regulated return on the assets.

PLUG IN AMERICA – Jeff Finn gave an overview of Plug In America’s recent experience in helping promote legislation using their Salsa platform.  In their first attempt this year, they had a 3% response rate which was good.  He also mentioned that that response got to about a third of all legislators in the State.

ELECTRIC BUS CONVERION – William Prigmore is converting a bus to electric and use it to give tours in Seattle through his tour company.  Contact William Prigmore, 206.423.9603 if you want to help.

The meeting was closed at 8:45 P.M.