Rural New England needs EV chargers to keep tourism revenue flowing. The Trump administration is making it harder to build them.

This story was originally published in the Daily Yonder. For more rural reporting and small-town stories visit dailyyonder.com.

When Charyl Reardon needs to charge her electric vehicle quickly, she has to leave her home in New Hampshire’s White Mountains region and drive 65 miles south on the interstate highway until she reaches the capital city of Concord. 

For those like Reardon, a resident of the Lincoln Woodstock community in northern New Hampshire, this kind of routine is not uncommon. Public charging stations for electric vehicles, or EVs, are scarce in rural parts of the state. Compared to the rest of New England, which includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, the Granite State has lagged in its rollout of public EV infrastructure. 

“They’re kind of sprinkled along parts around the White Mountains,” said Reardon. “You don’t often see fast chargers by any means.”

Some businesses and municipalities in the state are looking to ramp up the construction of public EV charging stations to meet growing demand. But a recent move by President Donald Trump’s administration could make doing so more difficult. On February 6, 2025, the Federal Highway Administration released a memo suspending the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, a resource supporting the construction of public EV infrastructure in states. The two phases of the program, spread over five years, award competitive grants of up to 80% federal funding for EV infrastructure projects along major roadways and in communities across the country. States are required to contribute the other 20% of costs, often through private investment. 

Reardon is the president of the White Mountains Attractions Association, which operates a visitor center at the entrance to the region in North Woodstock, New Hampshire. Travel and tourism make up the second largest sector in the state’s economy, and most visitors arrive by car. But New Hampshire’s slow approach to building public EV infrastructure could cost the state more than $1.4 billion in tourism revenue by 2031, Clean Energy NH and Ski NH found in a January 2025 study. 

The region that will be hardest hit is the White Mountains, which is projected to lose $353 million by 2031, according to the study, which was supported by the Environmental Defense Fund. 

With EVs projected to approach 30% of the cars on New England roads between now and the early 2030s, the study found that New Hampshire will fall behind neighboring Vermont and Maine—its key competitors in the regional tourism market—should it continue to lag in developing EV infrastructure. For Reardon, the need is already clear. Fast chargers are in the works at the visitor center where Reardon is based, located off Interstate 93, which connects Boston to the White Mountains. 

The memo from the Federal Highway Administration has caused confusion and concern among states and contractors hired to install projects, said Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, an EV data platform tracking how states use federal funds for EV infrastructure. 

“There is no legal basis and authority to do this,” said McDonald. “It is all about creating havoc.” 

The NEVI program was established under the Inflation Reduction Act, a piece of legislation passed by Congress in 2022. To fundamentally change the NEVI program, Congress will need to revise the law. McDonald said he expects state attorneys general to prepare lawsuits against the memo in coordination with their departments of transportation and energy, which funnel NEVI funds to projects at the local level. 

In the meantime, states are pausing parts of their NEVI programs. While New Hampshire has already been awarded $2.8 million in NEVI funding to build charging stations along major EV corridors as part of the program’s first phase, it is unclear whether it will see any funding for phase two of the program to build EV infrastructure in communities. 

A spokesman from New Hampshire’s Department of Transportation confirmed to the Daily Yonder that the state will continue with phase one NEVI sites as planned. The spokesman said phase two NEVI development is “on hold” until the state receives further guidance and direction from its federal partners.

Beyond phase one NEVI funding the Granite State has already invested into projects in the White Mountains and other regions, close to $30 million in federal funding has been greenlit for building public charging infrastructure along major roadways and in communities. That funding comes through the rest of the NEVI program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grant Program, which was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

While the February 6 memo from the Federal Highway Administration says that reimbursement of “existing obligations” will be allowed, there is uncertainty as to which projects are considered to be “obligated,” given that the memo also suspends approvals for all plans for all years of the program. This comes as all states that have submitted their annual NEVI plans have received approval and obligation for four out of the program’s five years, McDonald said. 

“It's a real head scratcher, because on one hand it's saying, we're going to reimburse for existing obligations, but it's also saying we're throwing out the first four years of the plans,” McDonald said.

‘Here in New England, People Drive’

The White Mountain Attraction Association tallies 51 charging stations in the region, most of which are located at restaurants and lodging facilities. Ski areas like Loon Mountain Resort and Cranmore Mountain Resort have also invested in EV infrastructure, which tends to be more open to the public, Reardon said. 

“The North Country we often refer to as a charging desert, or ‘the donut hole,’” said Jessyca Keeler, president of Ski NH, one of the organizations associated with the tourism impact study. 

In a region known for its year-round recreational activities such as skiing, biking, and hiking, this poses a challenge for meeting visitors’ needs. 

“This is important for our industry because here in New England, people drive,” Keeler said.

In 2022, Massachusetts and Connecticut sent more than 4 million tourists to the Granite State out of 14.3 million total overnight visitors that year. Massachusetts sends the most visitors to the state of any place of origin, and in the winter, roughly half of all skiers come from the Bay State.

Drivers in Massachusetts and Connecticut are also adopting EVs faster than their New Hampshire counterparts. Compared to New Hampshire’s small but growing population of EV drivers, 77% of all EVs in New England were operated by Massachusetts and Connecticut drivers in 2023, according to the study released by Clean Energy NH and Ski NH. By 2033, Massachusetts is expected to have 1.7 million EVs on the road while Connecticut is expected to have 600,000, compared to 200,000 vehicles projected in New Hampshire, the study found.

Assuming a “baseline scenario” where the Granite State installs 30% of the EV chargers needed to support tourism by early next decade, the study found that nearly 4 in 10 EV drivers and would-be tourists might not travel to the state due to “inadequate” charging infrastructure. This shortfall is behind the projected loss of  $1.4 billion in cumulative revenue that the study found could hit the state’s economy by 2031. 

That number is equivalent to losing an entire season of tourism, said Sam Evans-Brown, the executive director of Clean Energy NH. 

“Imagine if during one summer, no tourists came to New Hampshire at all,” said Evans-Brown. “That would be the biggest headline you would see.”

Evans-Brown and Keeler agree that at the state’s current pace, it will not be prepared to meet the demand for chargers from EV drivers coming from both in- and out-of-state. Both said they are prepared to advocate in favor of state-level policy changes to lower barriers for building the necessary public EV infrastructure for the tourism market. 

“When we're talking to our legislators in this state, it's really important to show the business case,” Keeler said. “When you start talking dollars and cents and the economy and tax revenues and those kinds of things, people listen on both sides of the fence.”

In a state known for its purple politics, ideological differences over EVs have slowed the state from adopting policies that would make charging infrastructure more affordable for businesses and small communities, Evans-Brown said. Meanwhile, neighboring states like Massachusetts have expanded incentives to build public charging stations through “Make-Ready” programs that anticipate a surge in EV drivers over the next decade. 

Evans-Brown said that Massachusetts justified its program by demonstrating that public EV infrastructure would help the state reach its climate goals. New Hampshire’s 2024 Priority Climate Action Plan references financing to support the development of public EV charging stations, though the state has yet to enact a “Make-Ready” program. 

If the state were to consider the number of EVs expected to be on the road in the early 2030s—given that adoption rates are projected to continue growing over the next ten years—Evans-Brown said the financial benefit would become clear. While the tourism impact study that Keeler and Evans-Brown worked on demonstrates how the Granite State’s economy could suffer from failing to install public EV infrastructure, a comprehensive look at what the state stands to gain has yet to be done. 

“You can justify these programs just on a cost basis if you do that kind of analysis,” Evans-Brown said. “But we haven’t gotten there yet.”

‘You Build It and They Will Come’ 

In the state’s southwest corner, four spots in the Monadnock Food Co-op’s parking lot are now reserved for EV drivers looking to charge. Located in Keene, New Hampshire, some twenty minutes from both the Massachusetts and Vermont borders, the cooperatively-owned grocery store installed the chargers with the help of state funding in the spring of 2024.

“It just seemed like a perfect pairing for an EV driver to be able to use these charging stations while doing some grocery shopping or getting lunch or dinner, for example,” said Michael Faber, the co-op’s general manager.

The approximately $233,000 project to deploy the store’s chargers was financed by New Hampshire’s $30.9 million share of the Volkswagen Mitigation Trust. That pool of funding was established after Volkswagen settled with the federal government for its violations of the Clean Air Act in the 2010s. 

Since installing the charging station last year, Faber said the use has continued to grow. Travelers and locals alike have expressed appreciation for them, Faber said, as there are not many fast-charging options in the rural Monadnock region. 

“You build it, and they will come,” said James Penfold, director of eMobility Solutions at ReVision Energy, the solar and EV charger installation company that the Monadnock Food Co-op partnered with on the charging station. 

Penfold, who has worked with organizations across northern New England on EV infrastructure, said that projects are often cost-prohibitive to install without government assistance. Level two chargers, which can fill a car to full charge in several hours, cost thousands of dollars. Level three fast chargers, which let drivers plug in for 20-30 minutes before driving away, start in the tens of thousands of dollars. Labor and installation with the utility adds to the total cost of deployment. 

“Even level twos, they’re relatively expensive to install, so it’s really disappointing for the state right now that there are no incentives to be able to encourage them and help defray some of that cost,” Penfold said.

In the northern part of the state, Charyl Reardon expressed a similar sentiment. She said the upfront costs to install public EV chargers are unfeasible for many local businesses and municipalities in the White Mountains, even if they recoup the money later. 

For New Hampshire’s rural communities, uncertainties about the future of federal funding loom over plans to build EV infrastructure. Most of the grants at the state level, like the $2.8 million in NEVI funding or the award from the Volkswagen Mitigation Trust, originate from the federal government. 

The Trump administration’s attempts to freeze federal spending—which continue to be challenged in courts—has left the future of that funding unclear. 

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.