The Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council, or SOPEC, was recently awarded the second portion of an over $16 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration under the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure, or CFI, Program.
The first part of the expansion started in January of 2024 when SOPEC received the first portion of $12.5 million.
The community project plans to add around 50 Electric Vehicle, or EV, charging stations to the region through its Southeast to Southwest Ohio Responsive Interregional Deployment of Electrification Solutions, or RIDES, project. These additional EV charging stations would include an estimated 200 Level 2 charging ports and 30 Level 3 DC Fast Charging, or DCFC, charging ports.
The City of Athens and Athens County are both member communities of SOPEC, allowing them to deploy several Level 2 charging ports in the parking garage in Uptown Athens, Athens Mayor Steve Patterson said.
SOPEC, a public service governmental aggregator solely focused on electricity aggregation, is what Chloe Musick, director of public affairs and marketing at SOPEC, called “a shared energy office.”
“One of our goals is working with our member communities to meet their sustainability goals,” Musick said. “Several of these communities don’t have a single EV charger in their entire community, so this program will help ultimately implement EV chargers in places that don’t have chargers or have very few chargers, filling critical gaps in the region.”
The corridor project is the second part of the initiative, allowing SOPEC to install seven EV DCFC stations on Interstate 75 in Dayton, Route 33 in Athens and Logan and Interstate 70 in New Concord.
Musick said the energy initiative would bring together an estimated 16 communities and 28 partners across the regions they serve.
Jess Fritz, sustainable energy director at rural action, said initiating SOPEC’s project -- a new wave of technological infrastructure -- in the area could encourage the use of EVs among Athens residents, which would lower the region’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“With more charging infrastructure, more spread out, people can be more comfortable taking longer trips,” Fritz said. “They’re more likely to start adopting EVs, and since that’s the biggest contributor that our region has to greenhouse gas emissions, that’s going to directly reduce our impacts on climate change.”
Fritz recognized the shape this could have on tourism in these regions.
“A lot of counties, local governments and local economic development organizations have really been pushing tourism, but having a lack of EV charging infrastructure discourages that sector of the tourist population from coming here,” Fritz said.
Patterson, who has been involved in implementing increased EV infrastructure since the beginning of the project, also emphasized the role this grant could play in increasing the number of visitors to Athens.
“It will certainly help reduce any charging anxiety of someone who has an EV,” Patterson said. “You’re going to see this more for people coming to visit in Athens … if it’s a friend or a family member coming from a city outside of Athens who has a young adult who is going through their educational training at Ohio University.”
Additionally, Patterson believes that the Athens area and its surroundings have plenty to offer to allow this program to excel here.
“You are going to see a part of the state that so often in the past decades has kind of been overlooked when it comes to economic development and prosperity,” Patterson said. “Well, certainly we have been prospering, but stop and think about the level of outdoor recreation that we have in the Hocking Hills region of Ohio.”
SOPEC has discussed a five-year plan to finalize the implementation of enhanced EV charging accessibility in the region.
“The region, Southeast Ohio specifically, lacks the infrastructure altogether,” Musick said. “To choose Southeast Ohio is really bringing it to a place where the rest of the nation is trying to move to in unison.”
