Electric Vehicles: Impact on Household Energy Bills

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I am aware of some of the much higher charges for on-street charging, but the Government want to ensure that lack of access to off-street parking is not a barrier to realising the benefits of owning a plug-in electric vehicle. The on-street residential charge scheme is feeding through to local residents via their local authorities, to enable them to charge outside their homes and on the high street, as I have previously mentioned. The A-road system and the motorway system are also gaining a huge amount of investment to install at least six very rapid charging points in service stations.

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

With the Government already reducing the grant for new electric vehicles, and around half of the £300 million of Ofgem’s additional support coming from savings from other projects, the remainder will need to be met by consumers. How do the Government propose to make the transfer to electric vehicles affordable and to distribute new charging points effectively and equably across all regions of the UK?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

We pledged a further £582 million in grants for those purchasing zero-emission or ultra-low-emission vehicles to make them cheaper to buy, alongside generous tax incentives. We are also working with industry to deliver a market-led countrywide rollout of charging infrastructure. Our infrastructure strategy, which will be published later this year, will set out how we intend to measure progress in charging infrastructure provision and to ensure that there are enough in the right locations to support the phasing out of petrol and diesel vehicles.