Robert Betancourt’s staff hop on electric carts when called to make repairs at a classroom or ball field within the sprawling Rosemead High School campus.

Betancourt, the school’s facilities manager, also oversees seven newly installed electric vehicle chargers in the front parking lot. When he noticed some staffers, including the principal, plugging in their electric cars, he also remembered the work carts that don’t pollute.

A lightbulb went on: Why not think about personally going electric?

“I am now considering it myself,” Betancourt said Wednesday in between tasks at the school. He is thinking of buying an EV, he said, because the battery range would easily cover the distance to and from work. And his Ford Expedition admittedly gets poor gas mileage, so he’d also be saving money on fuel costs. He’s even talked to his oldest son about buying him an all-electric or plug-in car with gas assist.

1,000th new charging station

A person swapping an internal combustion engine (ICE) car for a plug-in electric car is one of the objectives of Southern California Edison’s Charge Ready program, which by the end of the year may reach 1,250 charging ports installed in the past 2 1/2 years. SCE has spent about $22 million since April 2016 helping to install 1,000 charging portals at multi-family, retail, office, school and government workplaces so far, said SCE spokesperson Julie Roether in an email.

Edison, the Rosemead-based investor-owned utility, will have installed the 1,000th charging station by May or June as one of 10 units under construction at South El Monte High School, said Shawn Cun, energy manager for the El Monte Union High School District.

The district and SCE are finishing up the installation of 44 charging ports at six district sites, including five high schools: El Monte, South El Monte, Arroyo, Rosemead and Mountain View. The district headquarters soon will receive five chargers, he said.

The district is the first public school district to be accepted into the program, Cun said.

Lowering air pollution, greenhouse gases

In the parking lot behind the towering Cathay Bank in El Monte, the joint venture between the bank and SCE resulted in 17 electric car charging ports using green-colored Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) manufactured by Aerovironment in Monrovia. On Thursday, BMWs, Teslas, Toyotas, Chevy Volts and Nissan Leafs were pulling charge in every space except for the handicapped spot.

“I grew up in the area. It is important to have charging stations in our community to encourage everyone in the community to adopt electric vehicles. It is important for our air quality because we live in an area where we are next to freeways and in high-traffic areas,” Cun said. “Anything we can do to promote cleaner emissions will be very helpful in improving air quality in our community.”

Based on data from participating EV drivers, the charging stations installed between February 2017 and January 2018 reduced 214.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, SCE reported.

Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels that adds to global climate change, a condition that has raised the earth’s temperature, causing longer droughts, melting polar ice caps and raising sea levels threatening coastal cities.

Electricity produced from renewable sources in California averaged about 30 percent last summer, but spiked at 67 percent last May as more solar plants go online, according to state energy figures.

In a report filed Monday with the California Public Utilities Commission, SCE reported that helping businesses and schools install EV chargers works as a marketing tool. Kenny Tang, Cathay Bank facility manager, observed several employees start driving EVs after the new charging stations were installed, the utility noted.

SCE pays for the infrastructure. The participant pays for each charger and for upkeep for 10 years. SCE gives rebates on a sliding scale for the cost of charging equipment.

For areas designated as disadvantaged communities, Edison pays 100 percent of the cost, which was true for EMUHSD’s portals, Cun said.

As workers connected power to the grid and bulldozers finished the trenching, Cun said the charging stations should be up and running as early as next month. At Rosemead, Arroyo and Mountain View, there are at least one regular user per site, he said. Some have up to three.

“My hope is for all of them to get used in the next year or two,” Cun said.

Chicken and the egg

In California, new electric car registrations rose 30 percent from 2016 to 2017 and zero-emission vehicles reached nearly 5 percent of the state’s market share in 2017, according to a recent report from Next 10 and Beacon Economics.

The same report said the state lags behind in public charging stations.

Edison is attempting to crack a chicken-and-egg problem that has held back the number of EV sales as compared to ICE cars.

No one will buy an electric car if there are not enough places to charge them. And if there’s not enough charging stations, few will take the leap from gasoline to battery power.

Gov. Jerry Brown wants the state to spend $2.5 billion over eight years to add 250,000 vehicle charging stations and 200 hydrogen fueling stations by 2025. Automakers have announced plans to add dozens of new EV models.

The problems with adding new charging stations according to SCE’s report include:

Housing boards of multi-family units say they don’t have the room and that most parking spaces are already assigned.

Some businesses said the costs were too high.

Many consumers are not aware of the benefits of changing from gasoline to electric power.

Betancourt said the charging stations at Rosemead High have been in place for five months. So far, only a few staffers and one soccer coach have used them.

“Even though it has been a nice experience so far, it would be nice to get some students using them,” he said.