The City of Atlanta announced that the Atlanta City Council has passed ordinance 17-0-1654, which will require all new residential homes and public parking facilities to accommodate electric vehicles. The ordinance requires 20 percent of the spaces in all new commercial and multifamily parking structures be EV ready; it also requires that all new development of residential homes be equipped with the infrastructure needed to install EV charging stations, such as conduit, wiring and electrical capacity.

“Today, the City of Atlanta has taken a historic step to increase our EV readiness and to ensure we remain a leading city in sustainability. I want to thank Councilmember Keisha Lance Bottoms for introducing this legislation and the Atlanta City Council for their work to pass this ordinance,” said Mayor Kasim Reed. “I am proud of our City’s commitment to energy conservation, as well as our efforts to ensure that EVs and EV charging stations remain accessible to everyone.”

Ordinance will go into effect immediately with the Mayor’s signature.

“EVs have zero tailpipe emissions,” says Stephanie Stuckey, Atlanta’s Chief Resilience Officer.  “While our air quality is improving, we still need to be mindful of our ozone and particulate pollution, such as, nitrogen oxides.  Atlanta is committed to a clean, healthy environment for our residents and visitors, especially our most vulnerable populations.  Transitioning to alternative forms of fuel and transportation is critical to this commitment.”

Under the Reed Administration, the City of Atlanta has been committed to integrating alternative fuel vehicles into the City’s fleet and providing infrastructure for residents and visitors in Atlanta. Through an innovative public-private partnership, the City of Atlanta deployed sixty electric vehicles, along with the corresponding infrastructure charging network, to the City’s fleet inventory last year. This program currently serves as one of the largest municipal fleets of electric vehicles in the United States and will ultimately reduce the city’s dependence on fossil fuels while saving taxpayers thousands of dollars per year. In addition, the electric vehicle fleet program is aligned with the City’s Power to Change Plan which seeks to reduce vehicle emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020.

The City of Atlanta also deployed five neighborhood electric vehicles for the Atlanta Police Department PATH Force Unit, the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department and the Department of Parks and Recreation to access the Atlanta BeltLine with zero emissions in June 2016.

The City’s other notable accomplishments in promoting clean technologies include Atlanta’s recent commitment to  transition to 100 percent clean energy sources for municipal operations by 2025 and for the entire city by 2035; contracting $160 million in energy efficiency retrofits in municipal buildings; and participation in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge program with 114 million square feet of building space committed to reducing their energy and water consumption by at least 20 percent by 2020.