Major Fuel Stations to be Forced to Offer Electric

As the government advances plans to make motoring more energy efficient, it is now set to accelerate plans that will force over a thousand filling stations to offer electricity charging points.

The plans are already in place to ban the sale of cars that emit CO2 by 2040, however it has now been revealed that in order to remain on emission reducing target, some 220,000 charging points will be required a decade sooner, by 2030.

The draft law is now being written which speeds up those plans, with a target of 27 months for initial compliance, which will mean some 1,200 filling stations having to have electric points installed, thus becoming ‘electrolineras’, almost immediately.

It is filling stations considered to be ‘super- gas stations’, in other words, those that sell more than 10 million litres of fuel and therefore have a turnover of around 15 million euro. They tend to be in the best areas of cities or on busy highways. Therefore the Government wants to install electric chargers with a minimum power of 22 kW , so that cars can access a fast charge.

If the fuel companies fail to comply, they face fines of up to 30 million euro, sanctioned with a very serious infraction of the Hydrocarbons Law. Repsol and Cepsa have a 30% and 13% share of the market respectively.

In the nine months after the approval of the law they will have to have the plan ready. From there, they would have to have operational services with the capacity to supply renewable electricity, which will require them to make agreements with the electricity companies.