Green Transport: Private E-Car Infrastructure Subsidy in Germany
For e-mobility to take off, not only cars themselves have to change but along with them the relevant infrastructure. While public e-charging infrastructure is increasing all across the globe it is clear that public charging infrastructure will not be able to sufficiently respond to the demand in 10 or 20 years. Private charging stations, so called wallboxes, can be installed relatively easy in newer buildings on private land.
The German government wants to tap into that potential. A new measure has just been put into place under which the German reconstruction loan corporation (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau) subsidises private wallboxes attached to dwellings with 900 Euro per piece. This is about half of the money required for purchase and installation.
The measure is meant to boost the uptake of private e-charging infrastructure, which hithereto is plodding along in Germany. The German government now provided a total of 200 million Euros, which shall suffice for 220.000 wallboxes. The programm subsidises only e-chargers at privately used property that is not publicly accessible. A number of further requirements need to be fulfilled.
The electricity must come from renewable sources, from a private solar-panel or from an energy supplier that only uses electricity from renewable sources. Moreover, the charging points may have a maximum capacity of 11 Kilowatts. The electrician installing the wallbox needs to sign a sheet confirming that all these requirements are met.
A rather controversial requirement is the fact that the wallbox must have intelligent control systems that may be coupled with smart meters, but can also function without. There needs to be a data-connection for the wallbox to communicate with the electricity grid. The aim is to create new tariff-models under which charging during the night would be cheaper than during day-time. Data-protection activists see this part as rather controversila under data protection considerations - but there is also critque in the opposite direction, in particular that smart-meters cannot communicate with certain wallboxes.
Progress with another bill to boost e-mobility infrastructure, however, stalled recently in Germany. The German government initiated a bill in March 2020, the Gebäude Elektromobilitätsinfrastruktur-Gesetz (GEIG). According to this Act, all new buildings must be e-charging ready, which means they must have charging points for all parking spaces available. However, according to the bill wallboxes do not need to be installed straight away. It suffices if sufficent pipes, etc. are already there to retrofit the building with wallboxes easily.
The German Parliament, however, time and again postponed voting on the bill. It is currently still in parliament, but soince May 2020 no progress has been made, according to the central information system of the parliament. It seems that the major parties in parliament are unable to agree on whether such an obligation should indeed be put into place.
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