Carper and Markey, Colleagues Urge USPS Leadership to Enhance Fleet Electrification Commitments

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and senior member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) led nine of their colleagues in a letter to the United State Post Office (USPS) Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and USPS Board of Governors Chair Roman Martinez calling for USPS to ramp up efforts to electrify its mail delivery fleet.

Citing the additional $3 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for the USPS to invest in battery electric vehicles (BEV) and supporting infrastructure, the lawmakers are asking the USPS to increase its electrification commitment for their Next Generation Delivery Vehicles from 40 percent to 95 percent. The lawmakers are also pushing the USPS to ensure that the manufacturing workers producing the mail delivery vehicles have an opportunity to collectively bargain and join a union.

“We urge USPS to use the $3 billion in new funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to further increase its vehicle electrification efforts and not merely spend the money on the 40-percent BEV commitment it had already made and had the resources to achieve,” wrote lawmakers. “With Inflation Reduction Act funding, USPS should aim higher and strive for at least a 95-percent electric mail delivery fleet that will reduce dangerous greenhouse-gas emissions, help usher in an era of ubiquitous clean car technology, and protect and create high quality union jobs in the domestic EV supply chain by insisting that the workforce producing the fleet affords workers the opportunity to collectively bargain.”

In addition to Carper and Markey, nine other senators signed on to the letter, including Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

The full text of the letter can be found here.

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