The UK’s largest provider of electric vehicle charging has announced that 100 per cent of the electricity it provides will come from renewable sources from next Tuesday.
The move by charging point provider Polar addresses one of the key issues of running a ‘zero-emission’ electric car, with critics often pointing out that the electricity used to charge them usually comes from non-renewable sources.
David Martell, CEO of Chargemaster, which runs the Polar network, said, “Switching Polar, the UK’s largest EV charging network, to renewable energy is great news for EV drivers in the UK.
“It reduces the overall emissions of electric motoring, removing the upstream footprint of electricity generation in the same way as drivers have eliminated their tailpipe emissions.”
The news coincides with the government’s announcement that it will ban the sale of new internal combustion-engined cars from 2040.
Environment secretary Michael Gove told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “We can’t carry on with diesel and petrol cars, not just because of the health problems that they cause, but also because the emissions that they cause would mean that we would accelerate climate change, do damage to our planet and to the next generation.”
Currently, the UK’s electric car charging infrastructure is not prepared for a sudden increase in EVs on the road. However, the government is looking at improving investment in the charging network.
Chargemaster currently runs 5,600 charging points and claims that it accounts for 40 per cent of all charging points in the UK. It says that it has installed more than 250 rapid chargers this year as its network expands.
