15.01.20
Electric Vehicles and Renewable Energy: How Bristol City Council is tackling climate change
Source PSE: Dec 19/Jan 20
Cllr Kye Dudd
Bristol has always been a city with sustainability at its heart. In November 2018, we were the first UK city to declare a climate emergency and, since then, we’ve begun to build environmental initiatives into our daily lives.
When I took on the responsibility for transport at Bristol City Council back in January of this year, I was faced with many challenges. One of the biggest was improving mobility and introducing sustainable new modes of transport around the city.
Last month, we launched our new council-owned public EV charging network, Revive, to coincide with the opening of the region’s first charging hub in Eastville Park. Revive will serve drivers in Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset, and we’re on track to install or upgrade 120 charge points in the West of England over the next year. The improvements will make it easier for more people to use electric vehicles, by providing more places to charge and a simplified payment system.
The charging hub in Eastville Park is the first of four planned for the region, each housing four to eight rapid-charge connections that can charge an EV up to 80% from 30 minutes’ charging. The majority of our new charge points will be supplied with 100% renewable energy provided by Bristol Energy, Bristol City Council’s own energy supply company.
Electric vehicles (EVs) offer a mode of transport that not only benefits drivers, but also the world around us. They’re cleaner, greener and cheaper to run, and their growing popularity is a positive indicator of a more sustainable future ahead of us.
The launch of Revive is part of our One City vision of improving sustainable transport options for Bristol, alongside electric car clubs, electric freight deliveries, more electric vans in council fleets and electric taxis.
Along with encouraging uptake of public transport and creating a clean air zone in the Centre, EVs have a solid role to play in improving air quality in Bristol. Enabling more people to switch to clean vehicles is one of our key strategies for addressing the climate emergency and delivering a carbon neutral Bristol by 2030.
This is a hugely positive step which will benefit the people of Bristol and generations to come.