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Electric Vehicles

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 23 October 2019

Wednesday, 23 October 2019

Ceisteanna (174)

John Lahart

Ceist:

174. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the number of publicly funded electric car charging as opposed to charging points in residential and commercial business places points he envisages will be in place by end of each of the years 2020 to 2022; and the locations of same. [43670/19]

Amharc ar fhreagra

Freagraí scríofa

The Climate Action Plan sets out a range of actions to support the delivery of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. These actions include developing the infrastructure to stay sufficiently ahead of demand. There are currently over 650 standard public charge points and 95 fast chargers (the majority of which are operated by the ESB) in Ireland.

I am in the process of increasing the level of investment in charging infrastructure. Under the first call for applications from the Climate Action Fund, funding of up to €10 million will support ESB eCars to develop a nationwide, state-of-the-art electric vehicle fast charging network, with ESB eCars also investing €10m. This project includes the installation of 140 fast chargers consisting of 90 150kW chargers (each of which will be capable of charging two vehicles simultaneously) and upgrading 50 existing standard chargers (each consisting of 2 charge points) to 50kW chargers The project will also involve replacing over 500 existing standard charge points with next generation high reliability models.

This is a multi-annual project and is expected to be fully completed by 2022. The locations of the chargers that will be installed as part of this project have not been finalised. However, a provisional map of the planned network, showing indicative locations, was developed by ESB eCars and has been published on my Department’s website.

I expect approximately half of the 140 new fast chargers to be installed by the end of 2020 bringing the total to over 160 fast chargers. This is expected to further increase to over 200 by the end of 2021 and over 230 by the end of 2022.

In August, I announced funding to support the rollout by Local Authorities of up to 1,000 on-street public charge points for electric vehicles over the next 5 years. This is to cater mainly for electric vehicle owners who rely on on-street parking as their primary means of parking near their homes. Under the scheme, which opened for applications last month, Local Authorities can apply to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland for funding. Budget 2020 provided funding of €2 million for the scheme that will allow up to 400 charge points to be supported next year. The rollout of on-street charge points over the coming years under this scheme is dependent on the uptake of this support by Local Authorities.

Under the Climate Action Plan, the government will develop an overarching charging infrastructure strategy with a target to be set for the supply of infrastructure to stay ahead of demand. In that strategy, we will review and update the targets (currently set out in the National Policy Framework for Alternative fuels Infrastructure for Transport in Ireland 2017-2030) for the supply of public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, taking into account the proposed uptake of electric vehicles set out in this plan.

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