New homes in England to have car chargers

The drive to electric - 20th December 2021

The UK prime minister has declared that, from next year, all new buildings in England will be legally required to have electric vehicle charging points installed.

The new requirements will cover homes, workplaces, new-build supermarkets and any building being extensively renovated. This will lead to around 145,000 charging points being installed throughout the nation annually.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the UK was going to "radically" change its cars, trucks, buses and other modes of transport. He claimed "The force driving that change won't be government. ... It will be the young people of today, who can see the consequences of climate change and will be demanding better from us."

The legislation will "make it as easy as refuelling a petrol or diesel car today," according to the government. The introduction of "simpler ways to pay" for vehicle charging via contactless payments was also announced for "all new fast and rapid charge points".

The Competition and Markets Authority has warned that Britain needs to rapidly raise the number of charging points, which currently stands at 25,000, with a ten-fold increase deemed necessary by 2030.

The drive for electric vehicles is a central plank of the country's emissions reduction policy and key to achieving climate change targets, as evidenced by 2019 seeing 16 percent of all emissions in the UK being made by cars and taxis.

The UK has seen strong recent growth in the electric vehicle sector. In 2018 just 2.5 percent of car sales were electric, yet this rose to 10 percent in 2020 and will have to reach 100 percent by 2030, as sales of new petrol and diesel cars will be prohibited from then.

The Policy Exchange think tank has expressed concerns that the pace of vehicle charging infrastructure rollout has dropped off, warning of "charging blackspots" in small towns and rural areas.

Friends of the Earth's head of policy, Mike Childs, applauded the government's move, noting that electric vehicles have a "significant role to play in building a zero-carbon future."