Written answers

Tuesday, 11 July 2017

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources

Electric Vehicle Grants

Photo of Timmy DooleyTimmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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609. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the estimated cost of extending the SEAI electric vehicle grant in each of the years 2018 to 2022. [32185/17]

Photo of Timmy DooleyTimmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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610. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the estimated cost of building additional fast-charging stations for electric vehicles (details supplied). [32187/17]

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 609 and 610 together.

The Electric Vehicles Grant Scheme provides grant aid of up to €5,000 towards the purchase of a new full battery electric vehicle (BEV) or a plugin hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). The scheme, which will be kept under review, is continuing this year and an allocation of €5 million has been provided in my Department’s Vote for this purpose. The grants are in addition to the VRT reliefs of up to €5,000 that also apply to EVs. Budget 2017 extended VRT reliefs on PHEVs to end 2018 and on BEVs to end 2021. No decision has been made yet on grant allocations for the scheme in the coming years.

Since the introduction of the EV Grant Scheme in 2011, the purchase of nearly 2,200 electric vehicles has been supported to date under the scheme to the value of €10.3 million. This year, almost €2.2 million has been spent to the end of June to support the purchase of 456 new electric vehicles. My Department expects a broadly similar number of electric vehicles to be grant aided for the remainder of the year which will show a significant increase on the 638 EVs supported last year and the 555 supported in 2015. The cost of the scheme in future years will be dependent on the uptake of EVs.

To date, fast chargers have been rolled out as part of the wider infrastructure rollout under the ecars programme which also includes standard public chargepoints as well as chargers in domestic and commercial premises. The ESB, who run the ecar programme, has informed my Department that the average cost of installing a fast charge point would be around €48,000. However, cost per unit can vary in price depending on the supplier and functionality of the charge point and the associated works for installing the charge point at a site.

The Deputy may also wish to note that on 31 May this year my colleague the Minster for Transport Tourism and Sport published the National Policy Framework on Alternative Fuels Infrastructure for Transport in Ireland 2017 to 2030. This points out that "there are almost 900 publicly accessible charge points available in Ireland, which for a country of its size puts it among the more comprehensive charge point networks currently in place across Europe. Large car manufacturers are also expected to become involved in the provision of high-powered infrastructure. A number of providers are likely to emerge onto the Irish market in the coming years, providing infrastructure at the higher end of the performance capacity scale, i.e. between 120 kW and 350 kW. These chargers will support quicker charge times and longer travelling ranges depending on the model of car, i.e. more cars will be capable of travelling up to 500 km on one charge."

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