New electric charging points for Aberdeenshire vehicles

A total of 13 new charge points for electric vehicles look set to be installed around Aberdeenshire over the course of the next year.

Ellon, Kemnay, and Meldrum academies are all amongst the venues earmarked by the council.

In addition, there's the Linden Centre in Huntly and the Deveron Sports Centre in Banff.

At the moment, according to the council the region has 57 publicly available charging points, of which all but six are currently online and

available for motorists.

Between August last year and this, they delivered a combined total of 515,430 kWh – or 27,369 charges.

This is a significant increase compared with the previous year where there was 282,816 kWh with 17,855 charges delivered.

A report to Thursday's meeting of the council's infrastructure services committee states: "There were fewer charges between August 2020 and August 2021, partially due to Covid 19, but this increase is in line with higher electric vehicle ownership and increased number of electric charge points."

Just one in 80 cars on the road currently runs on electricity.

The target, if the UK's net zero ambitions are to be met, is one in three by 2030, which is also the year when the sale of new petrol and diesel cars is set to end.

Meanwhile, the number of new public charging points is rising only about half as fast as the increase of the vehicles themselves.

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