Council to provide charge points for electric cars

Herefordshire Council is planning to introduce ‘juice points’ to enable the public to charge up electric vehicles, it was announced at the 350 Climate Change event in Hereford (Saturday 24 October).

Councillor John Jarvis, cabinet member for environment and strategic housing, said the council planned to install at least two ‘charge points’ in the city where electric car drivers could ‘fill up’. One of these is likely to be on the new ESG development and the other outside the council and primary care trust offices in Plough Lane, Hereford.

The charging points cost around £3,300 each and would be funded by the council, as part of a range of measures to encourage their use.

He was speaking as part of an international day of action on climate change at Hereford Town Hall, together with environmental experts debating Herefordshire’s response to the current global climate situation.

“Electric vehicles are gaining popularity and they are ideal for mixed city and rural driving,” he said. “Although capable of lower speeds than petrol and diesel models, they have comparable acceleration and produce zero tailpipe emissions. They are exempt from road fund tax, but Herefordshire Council wants to do more to make them more attractive for local people. I am particularly interested in making their support a feature of the city’s new retail and leisure development, which will be served with a wide range of other environmentally friendly measures, such as more cycle ways and foot paths, as well as a new public transport hub, to help cut down the amount of emissions from transport”.
  
Transport provides nearly 29 per cent of Herefordshire’s carbon emissions, said Councillor Jarvis, who also wants to introduce a pool of electric vehicles to encourage employees to leave their own petrol and diesel driven cars at home. Staff coming to work on public transport would use the electric cars to drive between premises to attend meetings with residents or other staff.

Herefordshire Council has adopted an ambitious target to reduce carbon emissions per head of the population by 13.1 per cent by March 2011. It needs a cut of 1.2 tonnes per person from energy use in homes, transport and business. The target is more demanding than other targets, such as the 10:10 campaign to cut emissions by 10 per cent at the end of 2010.