A Transport & Environment (T&E) report from May this year included this online tool which maps the number of electric vehicles registered in each local authority in the UK and the number of chargers located there. It ranks progress towards providing the number of chargers required by 2025.
EV Charging Progress in Each NI Council Area
Here’s the data for our 11 Councils, ranked in percentage terms from best, to least prepared for 2025…
- 01. Fermanagh & Omagh District Council – 55% (38 installed, 31 more required by 2025)
- 02. Mid & East Antrim Borough Council – 47% (27 installed, 56 more required by 2025)
- 03. Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council – 42% (36 installed, 49 more required by 2025)
- 04. Causeway Coast & Glens Borough Council – 36% (29 installed, 51 more required by 2025)
- 05. Derry City & Strabane District Council – 35% (27 installed, 50 more required by 2025)
- 06. Mid Ulster District Council – Dungannon – 33% (22 installed, 62 more required by 2025)
- 07. Newry, Mourne & Down District Council – 30% (31 installed, 72 more required by 2025)
- 08. Belfast City Council – 28% (51 installed, 131 more required by 2025)
- 09. Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council – 25% (30 installed, 92 more required by 2025)
- 10. Ards & North Down Borough Council – 19% (18 installed, 78 more required by 2025)
- 11. Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council – 13% (11 installed, 75 more required by 2025)
NORTHERN IRELAND – 30% (320 installed, 747 more required by 2025)
These figures look even worse when you take into account the amount of broken hardware around the province. And with just 39 months to 2025, we need to be adding around 20 new chargers, each and every month, to hit these targets.
Enough to Promote a Change?
While there’s a need to achieve an acceptable level of utilisation of the hardware, the report also highlights that not having enough chargers will delay the uptake of BEVs, something we are already seeing in Northern Ireland…
…with too few chargers utilisation rates will be good but drivers will struggle to find a convenient public charge point of the type they need. This is likely to lead to negative media coverage that will discourage new drivers buying an BEV until 2035 (when they will be required to). Growing the number of chargers at the right speed is therefore essential.
Beyond 2025
In all three scenarios, the report shows the number of charges required accelerating quickly after 2025…
The figure [below] illustrates there is a large increase in the number of public charges between 2025 and 2030 (about 4 times) with charges then doubling between 2030 and 2035 and doubling again from 2035 to 2050. This illustrates it will be essential to ready the market for a large increase in chargers after 2025
This T&E paper, even though it recommends fewer chargers are required than in many other reports, still shows how unprepared we are for the electrification of transport in Northern Ireland. We once again call for the executive to setup an EV Taskforce with powers to cut the red tape, end the years of talking and urgently turn things around here.
Read the full report here – Creating a world-class UK charging network
2 Responses
Grim reading for sure. Immense pressure on the public network more than ever and likely stymied uptake of EV. Perhaps scope for a private collective of drivers who share and share alike their own home chargers to bolster the network?
Absolutely agree, well for some scenarios, community sharing of charge points is something I strongly believe in and have registered for Co Charger (https://co-charger.com) for my home charger, you can choose to accept or not and you can choose the pricing model.
This could be used to help scenarios where people in a community dont have off street parking to charge.
So Im happy to help, but it’ll not be for everyone to offer up their charge point. So while I support it, but it doesnt remove the need for a fit for purpose public charge network as well as incentives for Companies to provide workplace charging for staff, which I’m also lucky to have access to.
Of course you dont need to have a third party to organise friends to use your service, but neighbors who you dont know, this is a way to see who is already sharing.