BEAMA and Green Finance Institute publish updated EV infrastructure guide

BEAMA, the trade body for electrotechnical and energy products, has collaborated with the Green Finance Institute to publish an updated Guide to Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, dated September 2024. The document combines a revision of BEAMA's 2015 guide with a new section written for investors¹.

The 2015 edition was downloaded more than 20,000 times and was described by BEAMA as "a valuable resource for owners, users, installers, sellers and even manufacturers of EV charging products"¹. The new edition is the third, according to the guide itself².

"Now BEAMA has collaborated with the Green Finance Institute to combine an update of our 2015 document with a guide for investors"

The guide sets out market context alongside technical and financial material. It states that there is currently 1 million battery electric vehicles in the UK and 50,00 public chargepoints, and that as of 30 March 2024 there were 59,590 public charging points². It reports that annual EV sales rose from fewer than 1,000 in 2011, less than 0.1 per cent of total registrations, to nearly 315,000 by the end of 2023, 16.5 per cent of registrations². Transportation is responsible for 26 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other sector, and the guide states that it is responsible for more than 40,000 excess deaths in the UK every year².

On charging behaviour, the guide states that 82 per cent of EV drivers have access to charging at home and 93 per cent use public charging networks, while around a third of the UK does not have access to off-street parking². It puts the investment required in charging infrastructure at an estimated minimum of £20bn by 2030².

The guide lists policy and regulatory milestones relevant to home and public charging:

Source: Guide to Electric Vehicle Infrastructure²

It also notes that the government published its updated Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy in March 2022, pledging up to £1.6bn of public funding for charging infrastructure, and that £2.5bn has been invested by the government in the transition to EVs since 2020². Ofgem approved £300m in May 2021, half of which is to be used to develop EV infrastructure including rapid chargepoints².

Why it matters for households

For a household, the guide's figures describe a charging system that is still mostly built around the home. Most EV drivers charge at home, but around a third of UK homes have no off-street parking, which places those households on public chargepoints and on the street-level infrastructure that the guide says is being installed ahead of need². The smart chargepoint regulations that came into force in June 2022 govern the equipment installed at home, and the guide's smart charging and vehicle-to-grid sections cover technology that lets a home's charging and, in some cases, its battery interact with the grid². The site's ev-charging hub covers the grants and schemes that sit alongside this equipment, including the Electric Vehicle Chargepoint Grant for Renters and Flat Owners and the closed Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme. The guide also covers vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home charging, noting that at the beginning of 2024 Octopus Energy launched Octopus Power Pack, described as the UK's first vehicle-to-grid tariff².

What happens next

The guide states that projects under one funding stream have been extended and must be completed by 1 March 2025, and that at the end of 2025 chargepoint operators must enable drivers to pay through at least one roaming provider at their public charge points². It also records that in February 2024 the government ran a consultation on the design of a fund, and that for one scheme all applications had to be submitted by March 2024². No further dates for the guide's own revision have been reported.

Sources2 cited

1. BEAMA & GFI Guide to Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, beama.org.uk
2. BEAMA-GFI-Guide-to-Electric-Vehicle-Infrastructure.pdf, beama.org.uk