Newport City Council has signed a 15-year concession agreement with public EV charging investor-operator Zest for on-street charging across the city.
The partnership will see Zest provide 144 chargepoints across 77 locations in the city on the south-east coast of Wales. The project is equally funded by the Welsh government, Zest and the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles’ (OZEV) On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS).
Newport City Council said it is expanding its EV infrastructure as a crucial part of its commitment to deliver equitable infrastructure across the city as under its carbon emissions reduction plans.
Robin Heap, CEO of Zest, said: “By collaborating with progressive local authorities like Newport City Council, Zest can deliver and operate the extensive network of chargers needed to enable drivers to choose to switch to electric vehicles.
Zest is backed by the government-sponsored Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund (CIIF) which is managed by Zouk Capital. The firm oversaw an investment of £30 million into the company in 2021.
The UK’s public EV charging network
Zest recently partnered with the Stonegate Group, a pub company that is a member of the Zero Carbon Forum, a non-profit organisation that is aiding the hospitality sector’s shift to net zero. Zest will provide fast and rapid chargers across four sites for the group, rolling out partnerships with retail and hospitality destinations across the country to develop EV charging infrastructure that it says synchronises with people’s daily lives.
The fast and rapid chargers for the Stonegate Group are intended to fit customers’ typical length of stay.
Other partnerships Zest has undertaken with local councils include an agreement that saw it install 150 chargepoints, a mix of medium and slow-charge units, in 35 streets across Warrington. The deal was in part funded by the OZEV Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) scheme, which is an evolution of the ORCS.
ORCS, which offered to fund 75% of the costs of local authorities providing public chargepoints for residents who don’t have off-street parking, is now closed to new applications, and ongoing projects must be completed by March 2025. LEVI recently provided £3.6 million seed money for an initiative known as OXLEVI, which plans to triple the number of public chargepoints in Oxfordshire by the end of 2025.
In its annual survey, EV charge point mapping service Zapmap said over half of EV drivers use the public charging network at least once a month. Zapmap’s survey found that 61% of respondents say public charging infrastructure has improved in the last year in terms of both reliability and overall growth (available charging infrastructure has, according to Zapmap, increased by 38% over the last 12 months).
New rules for charge point operators (CPOs) came into effect on 24 November. They are intended to improve customer experience and answer the assertion of those reluctant to switch to an EV that the charging network is insufficient.
