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EU expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure too slow
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) evaluated the European Commission’s support for member states’ deployment of charging stations and the associated EU funding. The auditors’ finding was that that funding provided through the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility, which aims to improve cross-transport infrastructure, was not always used effectively.
The ECA found that despite successes such as promoting a common EU plug standard, and improving access to different charging networks, obstacles to electric vehicle travel across the EU still remain. The availability of charging stations varies between countries, payment systems are not harmonised with minimum requirements and there is inadequate information for users.
In the absence of a comprehensive infrastructure gap analysis, the Commission has been unable to ensure that EU funding goes where it is most needed. The EU is still a long way off its Green Deal target of one million charging points by 2025, and it lacks an overall strategic roadmap for electro-mobility. The Commission has set a target to have one million charging points by 2025 and is aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport by 90 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.
The number of charging points in the 27 EU nations and the UK increased by roughly 36,000 a year from about 34,000 in 2014 to 250,000 in September 2020.
There is a significant risk that the target of one million public charging points by 2025 would not be reached if deployment continues to follow current trends, the auditors said.
About 150,000 new points would be needed each year – almost 3,000 a week – to close the gap.
Source: Euractive April 14th 2021
