Three new state laws about electric vehicles just went into effect.
The bills signed Friday by Gov. David Ige included one that will allocate a portion of taxes from petroleum products to fund more electric vehicle charging systems.
Another will require state employees to rent electric vehicles when conducting official government business.
And a third requires state-owned ground transportation to achieve a 100% zero-emission fleet by the end of 2035.
Melissa Miyashiro, Managing Director of Strategy and Policy at the Blue Planet Foundation, said, “We’ve made really impressive progress on clean electricity, but we have a long way to go on reducing carbon pollution in our ground transportation sector.”
“We’re still importing oil for a vast majority of our transportation needs in powering our cars and trucks. This is something we have to get a handle on if we hope to meet our critical climate goals,” she added.
Hawai‘i is committed to generating 100% of its power using renewable energy by 2045.
