Liverpool City Council has appointed Ubitricity, a wholly owned Shell subsidiary, to install a 300 on-street electric vehicle (EV) charge points in the city. The new 5kW charge points, which are installed directly into existing street lampposts can be installed in 2 hours. The rollout is planned for residential and commercial locations chosen by residents and businesses. The City Council says it receives more than 10 requests a week for new public charge points.
The additional charge points are set to treble Liverpool City Council’s existing netw¬ork of 150 charge points to 450, making Liverpool the authority with the third largest public charging network in the UK (behind London and Coventry). The rollout of the new charge points began in late September 2022 and is set to complete in Spring 2023.
After Liverpool City Council declared a climate emergency in 2019, it unveiled its 2030 Net Zero Liverpool Action Plan which laid out a roadmap to tackle its carbon footprint. One of the key aims of this plan, which also includes developing the city’s cycling and walking infrastructure, was to reduce carbon emissions from transport in Liverpool.
Cllr Dan Barrington, Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Highways for Liverpool City Council said: “I’m delighted we’ve begun to install this new network of EV charge points as it provides a huge boost in tackling poor air quality and reducing the city’s carbon footprint. This programme puts down a real mark of intent to provide the necessary infrastructure to help the move away from petrol and diesel powered cars. The fact that the roll-out is being led by community requests means the points are going where the demand is needed most which means they’ll be getting maximum usage. And hopefully the demand will grow meaning the need for more charging points to be installed.”