Ahead of spike in deliveries from holiday shopping and Black Friday sales, Markey, Carper and colleagues urge USPS to use Inflation Reduction Act funding to increase vehicle electrification commitments and support workers.
Washington (November 21, 2022) – With the gift-giving holiday season approaching and Black Friday around the corner, Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, and Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, today led their colleagues Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) in a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors Chair Roman Martinez calling for USPS to dramatically increase mail delivery fleet electrification efforts, including the Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV), an effort that would improve service on some 177,000 routes across the country. USPS estimates that the adoption of a fully electric NGDV fleet would roughly triple reductions in greenhouse gas emissions compared to a fleet that is only 10 percent electric.
USPS received an additional $3 billion in funds from the Inflation Reduction Act to invest in battery electric vehicles (BEV) and supporting infrastructure. The lawmakers urge USPS to make a commitment to increase its fleet electrification commitment to 95 percent from 40 percent, leveraging the additional funding provided through the Inflation Reduction Act to not simply meet its previous commitment, but rather to make further progress towards a more ambitious benchmark. In the letter, the lawmakers also push USPS to ensure the manufacturing workers producing the mail delivery vehicles have an opportunity to collectively bargain and join a union.
“We urge USPS to use the $3 billion in new funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to further increase its vehicle electrification efforts and not merely spend the money on the 40-percent BEV commitment it had already made and had the resources to achieve,” wrote lawmakers. “With Inflation Reduction Act funding, USPS should aim higher and strive for at least a 95-percent electric mail delivery fleet that will reduce dangerous greenhouse-gas emissions, help usher in an era of ubiquitous clean car technology, and protect and create high quality union jobs in the domestic EV supply chain by insisting that the workforce producing the fleet affords workers the opportunity to collectively bargain.”
This letter is the most recent action from Senator Markey in his push for USPS to increase fleet electrification efforts. In February 2022, Senators Markey (D-Mass.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) led a letter calling for DeJoy and Martinez to abandon procuring a gasoline-powered delivery fleet for its NGDV. In May 2021, Senator Markey introduced the Community Vehicle Charging Act of 2021 to invest $375 million in a Department of Transportation grant program to install electric vehicle infrastructure, such as charging stations, for environmental justice communities.
When these politicians who want all of these electric delivery vehicles find out the vehicles can’t deliver mail effectively or they die before the end of the route they will say they had no idea and walk away saying it’s all the USPS’s fault. Having anything more than a 1/4 of the fleet electric is crazy and it will hurt delivery.