Edinburgh council to install 66 EV charging points

The City of Edinburgh Council has agreed plans to considerably boost its network of EV charging points on streets across the Scottish capital.

The project plan, which will see 66 on-street EV charging points installed across 14 ‘hubs’ across the city and will be supported by £2.2m of funding by Transport Scotland, was agreed by members of the council’s Transport and Environment Committee when they met last week.

This initial roll-out of EV charging infrastructure forms the first part of Edinburgh’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure business case which aims to install 211 on-street EV charging points by 2023, a project which will cost a total of £3.3m.

It is predicted that the business case will result in Edinburgh saving 7,715 tonnes of carbon and over 14 tonnes of nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

The council’s transport and environment convener, Cllr Lesley Macinnes, said: ‘We are leading the country with our bold, strategic approach to providing on-street electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and I’m delighted that we’re now able to move forward with the first stage of our implementation plan.

‘We’ve seen an exponential rise in the popularity of electric vehicles over the last few years, and we want to see this continue. Encouraging drivers to choose environmentally friendly modes of transport over diesel or petrol cars will have a real impact on air quality so it’s essential that we provide the infrastructure to allow this.’

The first 66 EV charging points are planned to be installed strategically across Edinburgh throughout 2020 and will be made up of a combination of rapid, fast and slow chargers.

The locations of these chargers will complement existing off-street charging sites nearby and are planned to be on roads near residential properties to prevent disruption to pedestrians and residents.

The council is currently developing an enforcement policy to ensure that parking bays for EVs — which will operate 24/7 – aren’t used for unlimited parking and are reserved for electric vehicles only.

A new board, supported by the city’s Electric Vehicle Working Group, will be established this year to oversee the implementation of the project and to ensure good governance of the council’s plan.

The growing popularity of EVs in Edinburgh supports the results of a recent study by the International Council of Clean Transportation, which found that EVs are now cheaper to own and run than petrol- or diesel-fuelled vehicles.