Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is delighted to announce a package of funding totalling over £30 million to support a more equitable transition to zero emissions transport, ensuring that those who often face the biggest barriers to adopting EVs are not left behind.

This includes almost £2m to support households living in flats and rural areas across Scotland, recognising that access to EV infrastructure must be more equal across our communities. We will intensify our focus in these areas, helping homeowners, businesses and charities cope with post-covid recovery and the cost of living crisis.

We are providing additional funding through our Plugged in Communities Scheme to community transport operators and not-for-profit third sector organisations. This will support zero emission car-clubs and the procurement of zero emission community transport vehicles for lower income and rural communities across Scotland.

Our Low Carbon Transport Loan will make available £28m in interest free loans to support the purchase of used electric vehicles. The electric vehicle market has transformed significantly, and now is the time to encourage growth in the second hand market which will provide more options to those on lower incomes. We will also continue to support businesses including the taxi industry make the transition to zero emission vehicles.

I am proud of our bold action to decarbonise Scotland’s Transport sector by supporting the shift to electric vehicles. Over the past 10 years we have provided interest free loans worth more than £165m to support the purchase of low emission vehicles, our plugged in community car clubs have covered over 400k zero emission miles. And we have also supported individuals and businesses across Scotland to install over 17,500 EV charge points.

To help encourage the shift to electric vehicles, we have also invested over £50 million to develop ChargePlace Scotland, Scotland’s public charging network, which now has more than 2200 publicly available charge points. The latest figures show that Scotland is leading the way in electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the UK, with Scottish electric vehicle drivers benefitting from over 50 public charge points per one hundred thousand people, compared to less than 40 in England (regional totals and London excluded), just over 30 in Wales and less than 20 in Northern Ireland.

As further evidence of our commitment to decarbonise transport, in January this year we announced a new draft vision for Scotland’s public electric vehicle charging network. It provides the guiding vision on how Scotland’s public electric vehicle charging network will continue to grow across Scotland in a fair and inclusive way.

At its heart is a commitment to make the public charging network truly people-focussed, catering for the needs of all of its users and ensuring that it is reliable, accessible and affordable. The raft of financial support being announced today will strengthen this commitment further and provide much needed help for those who are coping with the rising cost of living.