the educator mag May 24 (1) - Flipbook - Page 54
How government help
installing EV-chargers
can give a huge boost
to schools and their staff
By Tom Bloor
The government’s recent announcement
that it is introducing new, vastly improved
EV- charger grants for state-funded schools,
colleges and nurseries provides a fantastic
opportunity for education leaders. These
funds can be used by schools to improve
the lives of staff, become more sustainable
and even generate income.
Schools can now apply for financial help
to pay for 75% of the cost of buying and
installing a charger – up to £2,500 a socket.
Given that a domestic EV charger – which
can be perfectly suitable for one vehicle
in a school car park – costs from less than
£800, including installation, this is a game
changer. Previously, the most a school could
receive was £350 per socket.
At a time when improving sustainability is
a vital goal for headteachers, the ability to
make a real, practical change to something
they have genuine control over should be
very welcome.
Operating a building that contains several
hundred people, five days a week, has large
kitchens, hundreds of lights and youngsters
who need to be kept warm whatever the
weather, leaves a big carbon footprint. But
if school leaders can provide a way for staff
and even students to make their
commute – which often isn’t possible by
public transport – greener, that’s a
substantial step forward.
Teachers and other employees may well
not have a driveway or off-road parking,
particularly in urban areas. Many live in flats.
So these new grants could be exactly what
is needed for them to be able to switch
to an electric car, bypassing the need for
a hybrid-vehicle compromise. If they can
charge their car while it is sat outside their
place of work for eight or more hours a day,
they’ll have more than enough energy to
cover hundreds of miles a week. Electric cars
are more expensive to buy, of course, but
savings in fuel, road tax and more can soon
level this up this initial outlay. And cheaper
EV models are emerging. Dacia, for example,
are launching their first electric car , which
will be around £15k.
In addition, having charging spaces at
a school can make it a valuable wider
community asset. Local residents can
perhaps use the chargers, out of school
hours or during the holidays. The ability to
top up your car’s energy for a few minutes
during the school run may be a small, but
enticing incentive for families to go electric,
at least with a second car.
Introducing fees for the public to use your
chargers can also bring in important extra
revenue. Most UK public chargers cost
between 55 and 79p per kilowatt hour
versus 10p/kWh or less for private ones.
So, if a price can be introduced somewhere
between the two, you’re providing good
value for users as well as generating tidy
profits from sockets that might be in
operation for a hundred or more hours each
week. A card-payment terminal can be
added to a charger to make it easier for
people to pay and to encourage more
usage.
But aside from the financial benefits to a
school and its employees, having EV
chargers sets a tremendous example to
pupils. If they can see that their place of
study, their headteacher and their teachers
are committed to more sustainable ways of
getting around, that will almost inevitably
have an influence on them. There is, after all,
a lot of talk about fighting climate change
in classroom lessons and the media, but
not always that many obvious practical
examples in children’s daily lives.
The new grants form part of the
Department of Transport’s Workplace
Charging Scheme. The government is also
giving local authorities £381 million to
install other public-sector charge points,
through the Local Electric Vehicle
Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund. That’s good to
hear and it’s encouraging that there are
now 770,000 fully battery electric vehicles
in the UK. But more, of course, still needs
to be done.
Councils really need to get moving,
installing more public chargers. Companies
like evec will explore the possibility of
funding the remainder of the cost of
chargers for schools, after the grant, in
return for some of the revenue chargers
bring in. We want to remove any possible
barriers put up by local authorities claiming
they don’t have enough funding to install
any units. But we are still a long way from
seeing affordable public chargers on most
streets, and that’s what we need to aim for
to increase EVs from 16% of new cars in
2023, to be the dominant force in motoring
in the near future
It would, perhaps, be shrewd for the
government to introduce a scheme that
contributes to the cost of teachers and other
public servants buying an electric car.
But whether such an initiative ever comes to
fruition, or not, the new EV charger grants
still have enormous potential for our schools
to become leaders in the progression to a
more sustainable transport infrastructure.
Tom Bloor is managing director of evec,
which supplies and installs a wide range of
commercial and domestic EV chargers to
the public and businesses.
