I understand the Minister is taking Questions Nos. 7 and 10 together in the names of Deputies Aindrias Moynihan and Catherine Martin. I understand Deputy Eamon Ryan is taking the question for Deputy Catherine Martin. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Questions (7, 10)
Oral answers (16 contributions)
Aindrias Moynihan
Question:7. Deputy Aindrias Moynihan asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment when proposals will be brought forward to support the provision of effective and efficient publicly accessible electric vehicle charging; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23922/18]
View answer
Catherine Martin
Question:10. Deputy Catherine Martin asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if the possibility of mandating all petrol stations, supermarket car parks and public car parks to have electric vehicle charge points has been considered. [23967/18]
View answerWe need to increase the level of electric car usage to meet commitments. The State is very much behind with no more than 4,500 electric vehicles on the road at the moment. Range anxiety is a big issue for many people who are driving. The inadequate network is a huge aspect of that range anxiety, not just the lack of availability of charging points but also the slow response in getting them up and running. How quickly can that be addressed and adequate charging points made available to people?
I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 and 10 together.
There are now approximately 5,400 electric vehicles on our roads. As the electric car market matures, it is vital that the charging infrastructure develops alongside it and I recognise that a range of charging options is necessary to provide the convenience and reliability that electric vehicle drivers require.
Home charging is the primary method of charging for the majority of electric vehicles both internationally and in Ireland. Charging at home at night is the most cost efficient and eco-friendly way of charging an electric vehicle. Given the high proportion of homes with driveways and dedicated parking spaces, Ireland has greater capacity for home charging than many other countries. From January of this year, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, grant of up to €600 is available to support the installation of home charging points. This is available to the purchasers of new and, more important, second-hand electric vehicle owners, thus providing certainty to the second-hand value of electric vehicles, which I have no doubt has contributed, along with the budget 2018 supports, to the significant increase in new electric vehicle sales.
The national policy framework, alternative fuels infrastructure for transport 2017 to 2030, sets out the need for electric charging in Ireland. Although the existing capacity of the public charging network is considered adequate, maintenance, availability of parking and the development of infrastructure to meet the growing demand is necessary. The majority of the existing network of publicly accessible charging points was rolled out by the ESB through its eCars programme where the majority of funding was recovered through the use of system charges as approved by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities.
The ESB intends doubling the funding it spends on the network this year to €2 million.
Following a public consultation process, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, published its independent regulatory decision on the ownership of this infrastructure in October 2017. A key outcome of the decision was that the charging network should not form part of the regulated asset base and therefore expansions of the network should not be funded from network charges. The decision also set out the need for the electric vehicle charging infrastructure to operate on a commercial basis. In the absence of State-led support, this is unlikely to happen in the near term. Capital funding of €1.5 million has been allocated in my Department's budget this year, therefore, to support the provision of public charging.
A key aspect of the work of the low-emission vehicle task force, co-chaired by my Department and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, is to devise a sustainable policy framework to ensure sufficient and effective electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This work has included examining options for potential support measures for public charging, and I expect the task force to report on these options shortly. Support for public charging is available through the better energy communities scheme administered by the SEAI. This supports community-based partnerships to improve the energy efficiency of homes, businesses and community facilities in a local area. My Department, in conjunction with the SEAI, is also developing additional supports for the roll-out of public charging. I expect to announce those later this year.
In addition, the work of the low-emission vehicle task force includes the examination of the potential role of planning and building regulations. This includes the consideration of placing requirements on developments to install infrastructure to support the uptake of low-emission vehicles. This would include charging points for electric vehicles and potentially other infrastructure such as compressed natural gas fuelling. I expect the low-emission vehicle task force to report on planning specific aspects of its work later in the year. The implementation of any such regulations will be ultimately a matter for my colleague the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy.
I raised this matter with the Minister in April. At that stage, the low-emission vehicle task force was expected to report shortly. It has been examining this since September 2017. It is a moving target and continues to slip. The original target aimed at was 50,000 for 2020. Realistically, there will only be about 8,000 in the revised targets. Things are constantly slipping. When will this task force report? Will it recommend that there be charging points in public car parks and places where there will be availability for people travelling longer distances? Range anxiety is an issue.
The Minister outlined where the current availability is considered to be adequate. How can it possibly be adequate? There are only 70 fast chargers. It also takes a long time to get them repaired. It took six months to get the one in Macroom repaired. On a journey last year from Cork to Dublin, the two large population centres, the Macroom charging point was down, the Copley Street point was down, the two points in Portlaoise were down, the point at junction 14 was down, the point at Kildare was down, the Rathcoole point was down and the Red Cow point was down. That is between the two major population centres. How can that kind of a network be considered adequate?
I will let Deputy Eamon Ryan in now as well and then the Minister.
The Minister is not doing enough. We are not being ambitious enough. We are not thinking big enough. The sum of €1.5 million will not cut it. The climate figures being announced today are shocking in respect of how this State, this Government and the previous Government in particular have abandoned ambition. We are not thinking big enough and not thinking into the future. In my constituency, most people will not have a driveway and will not be able to charge at home. In many parts of this country as well as in my constituency, we need to create charging spaces that the public can use.
If the budget is only €1.5 million, one of the ways it could be done is to require petrol stations, starting with a certain size, to have a charging point. Supermarkets would also have to have charging points. They would benefit from it. Municipal car parks, which are making a fortune in this city, would also have to have charging points. That regulatory system brings us back to what we were talking about earlier. Industry, or even supermarkets, for instance, would bear the cost but would benefit from attracting customers.
We need to do this quickly. Our emissions are rising and there is no reduction in sight into the next decade. We have a massive gap between what we, rightly, have committed to do within the European Union and the direction in which the EPA says we are going. Everything has to change. There has to be a quantum leap in the scale of response. It should start with electric vehicles because they comprise a better system. They are better cars, they are cleaner for asthma and other health reasons, and they use our own fuel rather than fuel from Saudi Arabia or Russia. It is win-win-win. It will only happen, however, when the State leads and on a scale ten or 20 times the present response.
I do not disagree with Deputy Eamon Ryan. The Government has finite resources and we have to use the regulatory tools available to us. That is part of the work of the low-emission vehicle task force. I am frustrated, like Deputy Aindrias Moynihan, by the progress on this and by progress in Government in general. We are making significant progress, however, and once we have the output from the task force, I intend to try to proceed in every way that I can. I did acknowledge in my initial contribution that there is an issue with maintenance. I fully accept that. I also get those complaints and that is great. It is great that I, as a rural Deputy, now get constituents coming to me complaining about the infrastructure not being in place. People are purchasing electric vehicles and making that big move away from diesel. That is significant.
There is an issue in respect of range anxiety in this country and that is slowly being addressed as well. Deputy Rock gave me much grief over not having an EV charging point here in Leinster House. He and Deputy Shortall both have electric vehicles. We will have a charging point installed as part of the ongoing works here. It will be available at Agriculture House for Members of the Oireachtas to charge their cars. I hope that by the time it is put in, many more colleagues will have electric vehicles as well.
Put in ten-----
Deputy Ryan will have another opportunity. He should not interrupt, please.
We have gone from a situation where, in terms of investment in the network, last year the ESB put in €1 million whereas this year €3.5 million is being put in, an increase of 250%, albeit from a small base. We need to put in more infrastructure, particularly now when we see a step change in the number of vehicles being purchased. Since the start of this year, 1,000 vehicles have been purchased. Fewer than 1,000 vehicles were purchased in the whole of last year. We are reaching that tipping point now and we need to resource it properly.
I am glad the Minister said step change because Ireland as a nation is behind the curve and in a catch-up situation. There needs to be a step change in pace in terms of the network and encouraging people to use electric cars and to have more of them.
Will the Minister clarify one point? He indicated that €1.5 million was available to his Department, but when this was raised earlier this year the Minister said that €1.8 million was available. Has spending started-----
Yes, it has.
-----or why is there a difference in the figures? When will that spending be visible to those who have cars and who want to have cars? When will they see additional charging points throughout the country?
The symbol of one charging point for the Dáil is an example of why this is not the required scale of change. Perhaps people cannot see that at the moment. It is very hard to get an electric vehicle at the moment. A person who wants to buy one probably could not get one because the order book is so long. The whole world is going in this direction. That is now a rock solid guarantee. In two or three years, when all the manufacturers switch to electric, which is what they are doing, and the volume of cars is available, Irish households are going to be looking to do this.
It will not be one in Leinster House; it will be ten and then 100. That is what we should be thinking. It should not just be in Leinster House. Dublin city centre has approximately 10,000 public parking spaces. Apart from public servants, most workers no longer drive into the centre of Dublin. It is difficult in government sometimes, but the Minister should go to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to ask for the resources to be allocated. Let us change every single public office, not just Leinster House. Let us start with the Department of Finance, not just in Agriculture House but in every public place because that is what is coming. However, it will not come fast enough if we only do it in one place. That is an example of the small thinking that is holding us back.
I concur with much of what has been said. I wrote to the Minister last year to point out that in Ballyshannon and Bundoran in County Donegal there were two electric vehicle charge points. Both were taken away and not replaced. That is happening in many places throughout the country. Electric car owners plan their journey because they have to charge them. When they travel and stop somewhere, they find a car is already being charged at that point. The problem is that we do not have nearly enough charging points. I know that many of the car manufacturers are supplying large batteries of up to 60 kW, which will improve their range. However, particularly for people who live in rural areas and have longer journeys to make, we need to have more charging points in place. We will need to look again at the model that was in place, whereby ESB was providing them free of charge. Every public lamp post has a duct containing electric cables. It should be possible to install charging points on many of them. That will have to be done throughout the country if we are to take the issue seriously.
It is great that rural colleagues are raising this issue. Deputy Martin Kenny spoke about people from rural areas finding a car already at a charging point. Things are beginning to happen, but I accept that we need to do more. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is considering installing charging points on lamp posts. It has been done in other parts of the world and we need to consider doing it, particularly to address the issues in Dublin raised by Deputy Eamon Ryan. As the technology develops, the vast majority of people will be able to do much of the charging at home.
I say to Deputy Aindrias Moynihan that we are not behind the curve. Ireland has a far greater spread of charging points than the United Kingdom. As we have only one operator, electric car owners only have a single card and that will remain the case. It will probably involve the use of a debit card in the future. Drivers in the United Kingdom need five or six cards to use the network. Some 90% of the existing network uses three-phase electricity which means that vehicles can be charged 50% quicker than the vast majority in the United Kingdom which use single-phase electricity. We are not behind the curve in that regard. Can we do better? Yes, absolutely. Do we need to invest more? Do we need to look at the regulation? Companies such as Lidl Ireland are already installing charging points in its supermarket car parks. Hotels are also considering installing them. However, we need to expedite the process.