When the grid goes down during a wildfire or extreme heat event, it is common for communities to rely on diesel generators. California municipalities may have a cleaner, smarter option already in their fleets.
Bidirectional electric vehicles can store clean energy and return it to buildings during outages, providing backup power for up to ten days. Unlike fixed solar-plus-storage installations, they can be deployed to multiple sites, reduce diesel pollution, cut energy costs, and leverage vehicle purchases municipalities are already making.
California’s Advanced Clean Fleets regulation already requires municipalities to transition to zero-emission vehicles, and there exists a largely untapped opportunity to pair that transition with community resilience infrastructure. The Climate Center, which has been pioneering a similar model with electric buses in California school districts since 2024, is now working to extend it to city-owned fleets and the resilience hubs that serve communities during disasters.
The project supported by CO2 Foundation focuses on building the evidence base and relationships needed to pilot use of city-owned EVs as resilience assets. The team will survey and interview members of the Local Government Sustainable Energy Coalition, document technical and logistical considerations from bidirectional charger vendors, and develop a shortlist of candidate municipalities based on criteria including extreme weather vulnerability, power outage risk, EV procurement plans, and environmental justice metrics. The phase concludes with a published report and an educational campaign — including report distribution, conference presentations, and an online briefing.
If the project succeeds in demonstrating feasibility and building municipal buy-in, The Climate Center aims to establish pilot projects, develop a best practices guide for other municipalities, and engage state agencies on the policy coordination needed to scale the model across California and eventually beyond.
Power outages driven by extreme weather and wildfire risk are climbing sharply in California, which has the highest proportion of US counties rated severely or extremely vulnerable to outages; public safety power shutoffs alone grew by 143 percent in 2025 compared to the prior year. Meanwhile, diesel generators — the default backup power solution — contribute disproportionately to air pollution burdens in the communities that need resilience hubs most. Bidirectional EV-powered hubs address both problems at once.
CO2 Foundation sees the possibilities in this convergence of mandatory fleet electrification, rising outage risk, and community resilience needs: a genuine opening for “feeding two birds with one hand” exists here, and The Climate Center is well-positioned to help municipalities recognize and act on it.