Electric car charging points installed at Tewkesbury Borough Council’s offices
Tewkesbury Borough Council is helping to reduce road emissions in the borough by installing car charging points at its council offices in Tewkesbury.
The charging points, provided by BP Chargemaster, are available for members of the public to use and can be found in the council offices’ rear car park.
The council installed a 90kwh solar panel system on the roof of its offices back in 2016 to help provide power to the building – this renewable power will also now assist with delivering energy to the car charging points.
The installation follows a successful pilot by the council to introduce a pool of hybrid cars for business use. The fleet includes hybrid vehicles and now a fully electric vehicle. The pilot was introduced to: reduce travel costs and emissions; remove unnecessary journeys; and combine trips to save time, money and the environment. The pilot was a great success and has now become ‘business as usual’ for staff who previously used their own vehicles for business use.
Enterprise Car Club, the council’s supplier of pool cars, was asked to provide a small fleet of vehicles to help the council streamline its business travel and reduce its carbon emissions. In its first six months, the scheme reduced business travel emissions by 4 tonnes of CO2 and it is estimated that the council will make annual carbon savings of around 8.6 tonnes*.
The council’s lead member for finance and asset management, Councillor Robert Vines, said: “We hope the new car charging points will be well used by the public, as well as by council employees who are embracing new ways of working to save the tax payer money, reduce carbon emissions and help our council become a carbon neutral organisation. The pool car scheme in particular has been a great success and the partnership with Enterprise has resulted in incredible savings, both financially and environmentally.”