Whether it be managing the city of Portland’s electric vehicle fleet or being on the cutting edge in the early days of electric infrastructure development, Alan Bates has spent much of his career thinking about energy transition.

Now, as a Lake Oswego Sustainability Network board member and lead organizer of the Lake Oswego Home & Electric Vehicle Fair, Bates will translate that expertise into raising awareness and boosting sustainability in town.

“There’s a lot of hope out there for people who want to try to do their part,” he said.

In his former role with Shorepower Technologies, Bates helped the company deploy plug-in stations across 35 states — including some of the first in the city of Portland and New York City. His role was in sales, marketing and business development. He was with that company for seven years and got the electric vehicle bug during his time there. The first time Bates ever drove an electric vehicle, during a trade show in San Jose, California, he instantly was blown away by how it felt.

“I got excited because mentally it just seemed that there was this transition and this option to get

off of liquid fuel and fossil fuel. There were some viable alternatives,” Bates recalled. “Now we’re seeing a lot of the unfortunate climate change effects. It became more of a mission to help figure out how to get that message out to people.”

During his tenure in Portland, the city went from having one of the least electrified vehicle fleets in the country to being up there among the most, going from around 30 vehicles to 250, and also started to build up charging infrastructure.

“Some of the work I had done and our team led to them being awarded $25 million to accelerate adoption, including buying vehicles and building charging in,” Bates said.

Though improvements were made, he had hoped to oversee a quicker transition to clean energy and noted a grant they had won years ago still hasn’t translated to the purchase of electric trucks.

“We wanted it to happen faster and government takes a long time to do anything. That combined with the availability of the technology … there still is a long road to get to the medium-heavy vehicles, which are the biggest polluters,” Bates said.

Now, Bates oversees commercial and multifamily EV charging projects for Portland General Electric. In Lake Oswego, he is taking over for Duke Castle in overseeing the electric vehicle fair.

Meanwhile, the federal government is making the energy transition more complicated. Credits for electric vehicle purchases are set to expire about one week after the Lake Oswego Home & Electric Vehicle Fair on Saturday, Sept. 20 at Lake Oswego Methodist Church.

“There is probably going to be a pretty big uptick (in purchases) I imagine. Likely people will realize they want to take advantage of the credit,” Bates said. “We will want to highlight that this is the time to consider electric and here are the latest and greatest vehicles and how they could fit into people’s lifestyle.”

Though the current federal leadership may not be as supportive of clean energy as previous administrations, Bates felt that this transition remains inevitable.

“I think the overall value and total performance and cost of ownership, I think long term the realization that electric is superior is already happening. The transition will continue even without the tax credit, even with less emphasis at the federal level,” Bates said. “It’s giving people the information that these vehicles exist, they have all these benefits. And overall it’s a better outcome and we are past that tipping point of ‘Is this going to happen or not?’ I think it’s a matter of time.”

For information about the upcoming fair, visit https://driveelectricmonth.org/event?eventid=4897.