EV Motorist Green Book Can Advance EV Adoption by Considering Human Experiences
In 1936, WWI veteran and mail carrier Victor Green provided the first issue of The Negro Motorist Greenbook, to identify accessible and safe places for Black travelers in the United States. Green said “there will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal rights and privileges in the United States.”1 Green didn’t anticipate a transition to an entirely new transportation infrastructure and technologies that would again challenge equity in mobility.
Addressing these concerns, Pamela Fann, Community Engagement Liaison (CEL) for Clean Cities Georgia and Founder & CEO of Integrated Solutions, created The EV Motorist Green Book. Fann’s Green Book is a creative and scalable approach to encourage electric vehicle (EV) adoption, particularly by Black drivers, inspired by the work of Green. Like Green, Fann focuses on historic and contemporary barriers for drivers including accessibility and safety, and differences in experience and impact for people of color. Fann's Green Book supports a critical piece to the success of the EV transition: placemaking for charging infrastructure in disadvantaged, underserved communities. While reducing concerns of charging accessibility and safety, her project also invites EV drivers on a route that integrates tourism, history, culture, and the economics of smaller underserved communities of the eastern United States.
Fann’s work on the Green Book and the company she launched, Integrated Solutions, led to Georgia Clean Cities’ interest in bringing her on for the CEL position. Integrated Solutions is an energy services company that focuses on energy efficiency project installation, workforce development, and civic engagement. Through this work, Fann has seen a trend of Black drivers who are reluctant to purchase EVs because the communities where they live, work, and play lacked charging infrastructure. Green’s original Greenbook illustrated how Black people could safely travel throughout the south, listing restaurants, hotels, gas-stations, clubs, barber shops, and hair salons. Green’s book also addressed “sundown towns” and places Black drivers should not travel after dark because of safety risks. Fann struck out to provide the same kind of guidance for EV drivers.
Fann remembers growing up in her family of six going on road trips because they couldn’t afford that many plane tickets. “There were times when we were in areas where we did not feel safe while filling up the gas tank and that took only a few minutes,” Fann said. “Imagine now driving down a dark highway
1 Hall, M. R. S. (2014). The negro traveler's guide to a Jim Crow South: negotiating racialized landscapes during a dark period in United States cultural history, 1936–1967. Postcolonial Studies, 17(3), 307–319. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.987898
and having only a 15% charge left on your car. You have to stop at the next charging station which is off of an exit in a town that you’ve never been to before. You need to be there at least an hour almost to charge. How safe do you feel as a minority, as a woman even, and with children in the car?” She saw an opportunity to consider human experience with charging to further an equitable future of transportation electrification for drivers and passengers of all ages, interests, and abilities.
The Google Grant
Fann found an opportunity to fund her project by partnering with the non-profit HBCU Green Fund to go after Google’s Environmental Justice Data Fund grant sponsored by Winward Fund. HBCU Green Fund’s empowers Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to become resiliency hubs and anchors for sustainable development, working toward justice and equity for people of African descent Together they successfully pitched a project to identify placemaking for EVs up and down East Coast at Black owned-businesses, HBCUs, historic sites, and more where people could charge their cars while economically supporting these historically underserved communities
Fann mapped a route from Washington, DC., to Miami, Florida, where she, along with friends, family, and colleagues often travel today. This route is steeped in historical significance. From 1910 to 1970 approximately six million Black Americans moved from the South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states in a mass movement known as the Great Migration. Many families that moved north in search of better lives and better treatment retain deep roots in the south.
Fann’s East Coast route connects drivers to Black history and culture at key places in Washington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Along the route, the Fann’s Green Book highlights opportunities for improving EV travel in each community, noting where charging stations could be placed or where bike lanes could improve micromobility travel, for example.
Identifying Communities
To find the right communities along the way, Fann looked for places with high energy burden, with a significant community history, and places where HBCUs and historic sites were located. Communities that experience high energy burden and low-income are also commonly areas with high air pollution, lacking infrastructure, and health problems associated with air quality. Clean transportation solutions in these communities can have a more significant impact on quality of life for the people who live, work, and visit there. Making EV charging accessible, sharing knowledge about EVs, and creating access to affordable cars is key for these communities.
The placemaking in the EV Motorists Green Book is about more than EV charging. It also provides connections to historic sites, restaurants, HBCUs, and other points of interest where people can spend
their time exploring and learning while they charge. Incentivizing travelers to spend time in a community also provides an economic boost.
The EV Motorists Green Book includes sites like the first stop on the Freedom Rides in 1961 where civil rights activists protested segregation on public transit. The book includes Shiloh Baptist church in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where the first black church was founded in 1863 by 21 former slaves Readers can find the former cigar factory in Charleston, South Carolina, where at the end of World War II 1,400 workers were employed including 900 Black women. In 1945, 1,200 Black workers walked out to protest discrimination and low wages. In Savannah, Georgia, EV drivers will find Franklin Square where there is a statue dedicated to the largest unit of soldiers of African descent who fought in the American Revolutions.
These sites are mixed in with places like Lincoln Theatre, the Anacostia Barry Farms, soul food restaurants, and Martin Luther King Memorial Park. Fann’s route takes drivers through Jacksonville, Florida, an area with a national ranking of 98% disadvantaged and a state ranking of 100% to the Ritz Theatre in LaVilla community. From there the route continues to Overtown, a place just outside Miami that was once called Colored Town in the Jim Crow era. There you’ll find the historic Lyric Theatre right down the street from Black-owned restaurant Red Rooster owned by renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson.
“There is so much vitality, culture, and experiences to be had in these neighborhoods and we would be remiss if we were not actively looking at placemaking for EV charging stations in all of these places,” Fann said.
EV Adoption in Underserved Communities
An equitable energy transition is important to meet environmental and social justice parity and provide fair access to clean energy resources, economic opportunities, and health benefits. Not only will it lower energy costs and decrease burdens on communities but can also improve the land, home, and health impacts that communities experience. It can create job opportunities such as those in renewable energy sectors, green infrastructure, and energy efficiency. An equitable transition can also ensure that all communities, especially those most vulnerable to climate risks, have access to reliable and resilient energy infrastructure, helping them better adapt to and recover from climate-related events.
Transitioning to EVs is getting more realistic for some as purchase prices drop, rebates increase, and federal tax credits for new and used EVs are available. This is good news since about a third of U.S.CO2 emissions come from transportation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Across the United States as a whole, access to public EV charging is increasing rapidly researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory reported a 6.5% increase in the number of public charging ports in the second quarter of 2024. NREL found most new charging stations have been installed in the
Northeast region of the United States, while California still leads the nation in total number of public chargers, yet census data from 2020 indicates Texas, Georgia, and Florida are home to the nation’s largest Black populations.
Health Impacts and Transportation Disparities of Black Communities
Black and Hispanic communities experience a disproportionate burden from pollution. Polluting industries are more often located in underserved communities that lack the political power and economic capital to influence the decision making around where these activities occur. In turn, the presence of polluting industries can further diminish property values in nearby communities, exacerbating the existing conditions of poverty and marginalization. This exposure to pollution also leads to disparities in health issues. Marginalized communities are more vulnerable to respiratory diseases such as asthma, lung cancer, COPD, and coronavirus.
In the United States, particulate matter exposure is disproportionately caused by consumption of goods and services mainly by the non-Hispanic white majority, but disproportionately inhaled by Black and Hispanic minorities. According to a Science Advances article, “PM2.5 polluters disproportionately and systemically affect people of color in the United States,” on average, non-Hispanic whites experience a “pollution advantage” with ∼17% less air pollution exposure than is caused by their consumption of goods and services. Blacks and Hispanics on average bear a “pollution burden” of 56% and 63% excess exposure, respectively, relative to the exposure caused by their consumption. This has a real impact on peoples’ health fine particulate matter is the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States responsible for 63% of deaths from environmental causes and 3% of deaths from all causes
Due to systemic racism and redlining, Black and Hispanic communities see more industrial sites, warehouses, highways, and high traffic roadways. Clean transportation could be one way to lessen the effects of pollutants. Working with communities to create clean transportation plans that meet their needs and providing information for them to make decisions for their best interest and health is key Working with them to identify pathways to a successful transition and alleviating the barriers to access is how we mitigate and remediate these issues.
By addressing environmental, health, economic, and social disparities, the adoption of electric vehicles in underserved communities can contribute to a more just and sustainable transportation system and foster a more equitable and healthy society for all. “I believe the opportunities for investment pointed out in the new EV Motorist Green Book are a first step toward making that society a reality.
The Road Traveled and Lessons Learned
Through this process, Fann identified many communities that need support in this work. Clean transportation is rarely a priority in underserved communities that are disadvantaged when it comes to health, economy, and housing. As such, opportunities for advancement that arise in this space pass by. With efforts like the EV Motorists Green Book, Fann is looking for ways to make clean transportation a reality in these communities, without putting the burdens of knowledge, time, and investment to make it happen on them.
Fann started a non-profit through her organization, Integrated Solutions, to support building out charging infrastructure. The Green Book allowed her to identify the need for placemaking, and locations to focus on, and work with communities to develop clean transportation plans. From there she is
working to identify funding opportunities for EV charging installation projects with utility or state projects. Recent federal funding has paved the way for initiation of this kind of work, but more on the ground work is needed to fund projects in the communities that need it most.
“We must begin solving for communities that are the most vulnerable,” Fann said. “Let’s put them first. If we get that right, the rest of it comes easy.”
Fann is also exploring opportunities to fund a continuation project to the EV Motorists Green Book that would outline placemaking opportunities and infrastructure challenges on a deeper, more impactful level.
