While there are only 760,000 electric vehicles (EVs) on UK roads today, this figure could hit 11mn by 2030, meaning action is needed to accelerate the rollout of EV charging.
RECHARGE UK – the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA)’s EV arm – released a report, setting out a roadmap for how the industry can keep pace with growing EV sales in the UK. There are 40,000 public chargepoints in the UK today, supporting EVs which make up around 2% of vehicles on the road. The Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate, however, incoming in 2024 could see EVs grow from accounting for 17% of new car purchases today to 80% by 2030, then 100% by 2035.
It means action must be taken now to start planning for public charging demand. This will call for local strategies and action plans for EV charging, with effective planning and central coordination set to be crucial to optimise deployment. This will ensure drivers interested in adopting an EV are not put off by a lack of charging availability.
In terms of where this demand will likely be, RECHARGE UK highlighted how there will be a shift in the status quo in the years to come. Right now, charging demand is fixated in London and the South East. However, in future, Birmingham (339.9GWh) will see significant demand, given how it has the largest vehicle count (1.1mn) of any part of the UK, followed by Glasgow (231GWh) then Sheffield and Peterborough.
Therefore, this is going to demand a mix of additional grid reinforcement, a more strategic deployment of chargepoints and the deployment of flexible solutions, such as battery storage and solar. The latter will provide more local level support and reduce the need for grid reinforcement in some cases. This can accelerate deployment.
It is not as simple as just speeding up deployment, however, with a number of barriers that need to be overcome.
Resolving these can streamline the installation process, cutting costs and shortening timescales. For example, at a local level, RECHARGE UK is recommending the government scraps Section 40 licenses as they are an “unnecessary cost to the chargepoint installation process”, places a statutory duty to plan for EV infrastructure on local authorities, and in a bid to make sure that car parks are ready to support a growth in EV demand to 2030, mandate more ambitious minimum levels of chargepoints and cabling.
There are also obstacles that need to be cleared at a national level, including making charging infrastructure eligible for prioritisation in the connections queue when the likes of emergency services and road freight are reliant on it to fulfil their roles, cutting upfront capital connection costs by socialising them within energy bills, updating the National Planning Policy Framework 2021 to make changes in parking space use and chargepoint deployment easier, and to ensure the ZEV mandate is ambitious as possible, with flexibility mechanisms restricted, providing investor confidence for a newly developed charging industry.
It further stressed the need to enable a futureproof development pathway, drawing on how EVs and EV infrastructure deployment is likely to face significant barriers form a lack of skilled workers.
Therefore, the government must create awareness, especially towards parents, that it is a credible industry for young people of all demographics to enter into and also work with key stakeholders in the education and EV charging sectors to create an electrical engineering course for chargepoint installation. This would ensure that the existing workforce can retrain, but also that young adults can enter into it without having to upskill in future. Further recommendations include urgently developing a new course for EV technicians and for all political parties to consider how to address skills gaps and convince the public of the value of these roles.
