EV, Charging & Intelligent Electrification Roundup (12/31/25 Edition)

Intelligent Electrification Roundup: EV News, Fleet & CPO Charging and Behind-the-Meter Solutions for CRE, Campuses and Communities

If you only skimmed headlines this week, you probably saw a lot of “grid stress” anxiety and EV-market hot takes. Underneath that noise, the more useful signal for real estate, urban and commercial development is practical: more chargers are getting deployed through CRE partnerships, EV-readiness is becoming code and permitting policy (not just “nice to have”), behind the meter and bridge power, and storage safety and cost are now gating factors you can’t ignore. Here are 16 stories—each with a tight summary and a link—built for owners, developers, investors and planners.

EV charging at scale

1. Pace opens an electric bus charging depot in suburban Chicago
   
   Pace’s new charging depot in Northbrook is a reminder that “fleet electrification” is often a real estate story first: service yards, electrical rooms, circulation, and uptime. For owners near transit and municipal assets, fleets can be the anchor load that justifies bigger make-ready upgrades (and later, public charging or tenant charging on the same feeder).

2. Tesla Semi charging station planned for Laredo, Texas
   
   A permit filing points to a dedicated Semi-charging build near a travel center in Laredo, a freight gateway market. For industrial owners, the signal is that truck charging will “cluster” where land, turning radius, amenities and power converge — and those sites may price differently once megawatt-class demand shows up.

3. California’s CALeVIP Fast Charge California Project stays highly actionable
   
   CALeVIP’s Fast Charge California Project documentation is unusually specific about what “ready-to-build” means (issued permits + final utility service design) and how connector mix affects eligibility (including J3400 rules). For developers, this is the kind of program where permitting discipline becomes a competitive advantage — not just a paperwork step.

Storage, microgrids and resilience

4. New Orleans greenlights a $30M virtual power plant program
   
   City leaders approved a program designed to treat distributed resources as a grid tool, not a pilot. For multifamily and master-planned communities, the big idea is financial: storage can be paid for twice — once by the resident for backup/value, and again by the system when it needs capacity.

5. Urban microgrids move from “nice concept” to planning priority
   
   A new look at urban microgrids frames the real bottleneck: cities want resilience and electrification, but the “how” is interconnection, controls, and governance — not technology. The opportunity for CRE is to align campus-scale microgrids with municipal resilience goals so projects face fewer community-trust headwinds.

6. Texas Permian Basin landowner LandBridge teams with Samsung C&T on 350 MW of BESS
   
   LandBridge’s option-to-lease agreements for two storage projects underscore how quickly battery storage is becoming “normal” infrastructure in ERCOT-adjacent growth zones. Storage additions like these can damp wholesale volatility — which matters to owners underwriting long-term power costs for large loads.

7. San Antonio’s CPS Energy seeks proposals for 500 MW of battery storage
   
   CPS’s solicitation is another sign that utilities are treating storage as a mainstream reliability tool. For commercial customers, more front-of-meter storage can help the system — but it doesn’t automatically fix demand charges at the meter, which is why behind-the-meter controls still matter.

8. Michigan community debates battery storage zoning while writing new rules
   
   A proposed storage project near Quincy highlights the local reality: zoning language, emergency response planning, and public confidence can decide timelines. For developers, “permitability” is now a core site-screening variable for storage and microgrids, not an afterthought.
   
   

Grid stress, policy risk and development economics

9. Sixteen states sue over the federal pause of EV charging program funding
   
   The suit is a reminder that public-corridor charging can be policy-sensitive — and timelines can slip for reasons that have nothing to do with construction. For site hosts, it raises the value of flexible deal structures (phased installs, upgrade rights, and backup revenue models) that don’t depend on one funding stream.

10. Offshore wind pause adds uncertainty to long-term power supply planning
    
    Federal moves affecting offshore wind development are a “rate and reliability” story as much as a climate story: changing generation buildouts can shift the medium-term supply stack. For owners, that’s another reason to underwrite electrification projects with sensitivity ranges on electricity prices, not single-point assumptions.

Clean power procurement and “AI-ready” real estate

11. Google to acquire Intersect Power
    
    Google’s planned deal signals how hyperscalers are pulling generation and storage pipelines closer to their core business. Real estate takeaway: markets that can pair large sites with credible power plans (interconnection, on-site flexibility, off-site PPAs) will keep winning the next wave of big-load tenants.

12. LG Energy Solution sells U.S. battery factory assets to Honda
    
    This asset sale reflects how automakers and battery suppliers are rebalancing where they put capital — and what they want to own outright. For the built environment, it’s another indicator that batteries are not just “car components”; they’re strategic infrastructure inputs that ripple into storage pricing and availability.

Building electrification that pencils

13. Carrier begins field trials of next-gen rooftop heat pumps
    
    Carrier’s rooftop heat pump trials — tied to a DOE-backed technology challenge — highlight the next phase of electrification: equipment that can handle colder conditions while reducing operating costs. For owners, rooftop units are where “electrification” becomes an NOI story quickly because HVAC is already one of the largest controllable loads in many buildings.

14. EPRI publishes a practical roadmap for powering small fleets and service connections
    
    EPRI’s work focuses on the unglamorous blocker: service upgrades and coordination for smaller fleet depots and sites that don’t have a utility-scale interconnection team. If you manage light-duty fleets, multifamily, or municipal portfolios, this is the kind of guidance that helps you sequence projects so you’re not stranded waiting on the utility.

“Zoom out” data points worth bookmarking

15. SEIA’s year-end examples of solar + storage meeting real demand
    
    SEIA’s roundup is useful because it frames solar and storage as reliability tools — not just sustainability optics. For CRE teams, it’s a menu of use cases to pull into investment memos when you need to justify storage beyond “backup power.”

16. New York’s push to rethink demand charges for EV charging stays in motion
    
    New York’s DPS has an active proceeding specifically about alternatives to traditional demand-based rate structures for commercial EV charging. That matters because demand charges are often the “gotcha” that makes workplace and multifamily charging underperform financially — and tariff redesign is one of the few levers that can change the math at scale.