Alan Dillon
Question:302. Deputy Alan Dillon asked the Minister for Transport the number of EV on-street charging points that will be provided in County Mayo in 2022; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38048/22]
View answerTuesday, 12 July 2022
Questions (302)
Written answers
The Government is fully committed to supporting a significant expansion and modernisation of the electric vehicle charging network over the coming years. A draft national charging infrastructure strategy for the development of EV charging infrastructure, covering the crucial period out to 2025 was published for consultation in March. The draft strategy sets out the government’s ambition regarding the delivery of a public EV charging network to support up to 194,000 electric cars and vans by the middle of the decade. Responses and submissions received as part of the consultation are currently being considered in the development of the final Strategy for publication.
There is a need for a seamless public charging network that will provide for situations or instances where home charging is not possible such as on-street and residential charging, destination charging, and workplace charging.
Zero Emission Vehicles Ireland is to be launched next Thursday. This Office will play an important role in our transition to zero emission vehicles. It will co-ordinate measures to support the uptake of EVs and the rollout of charge point infrastructure including the development of a number of new infrastructure schemes. A significant increase in funding for local authorities to deliver EV charging points will be rolled out in the latter half of this year.
The existing Public Charge Point Scheme continues to be available during 2022 to provide local authorities with a grant of up to €5,000 to support the development of on-street public chargers. The primary focus of the scheme is to provide support for the installation of infrastructure which will facilitate owners of electric vehicles, who do not have access to a private parking space, but instead rely on parking their vehicles in public places near their homes to charge their EVs. Mayo County Council has not as yet applied for funding under this scheme in 2022.
My Department has reviewed the Scheme and the draft Strategy sets out a number of additional actions to support delivery by local authorities, such as funding capital costs for civil and electrics works, as well as charge point installation, through a new Residential Charging Scheme.
My Department is also developing a new scheme which will support the installation of destination charge points in locations such as visitor centres and parks. This new initiative will help provide another critical link in the overall network for public charging.
€10 million was committed from the Climate Action Fund to support ESB investment in the charging network and this has leveraged a further €10 million investment from ESB, with the infrastructure to be in place by the end of 2022. This intervention alone will result in:
- 90 additional high power chargers, each capable of charging two vehicles - Seventeen high-power chargers distributed across 14 multi-vehicle hubs have been delivered as part of the programme to date.
- 52 additional fast chargers, which may replace existing standard chargers - This work is completed at 36 locations.
- 264 replacement standard chargers with more modern technology and with each consisting of two charge points - This work is substantially complete. 258 of the chargers have now been successfully replaced.
Further details on the progression of this project can be found at esb.ie/ecars/our-network/network-upgrades.
My Department continues to engage directly with stakeholders to ensure that a sufficient number of chargers, as well as a sufficient spread of charger types, will be in place to meet demand as we move towards our 2030 target of almost1 million EVs on the road.