Transport & Environment (T&E) research has shown that some three million public charging points will be needed for 44 million electric vehicles in 2030 if the EU is to become climate neutral by 2050.

That’s over 15 times the 185,000 public chargers currently available in the EU – which are enough for the current electric fleet but not to keep pace with the growing market beyond 2020.

To finance the necessary chargers, the analysis estimates Europe needs €20 billion over the next 11 years, or €1.8 billion a year on average, in private and targeted public investment. This is just 3% of the EU’s annual spend on road infrastructure today. T&E argues this is a business opportunity and co-financing can come from the European investment plan, which will support €1 trillion of sustainable investment over the next decade under the EU Green Deal.

Home and workplace charging must be prioritised, and between 20-30% of these chargers will need to be in disadvantaged and less densely populated areas to ensure everyone benefits from zero-emissions vehicles, said T&E.

Lucien Mathieu, emobility analyst of Transport & Environment, said: “The Green Deal for transport can only happen with zero-emission infrastructure. This means putting money into setting up the network of public chargers, especially at home and at work, and not in building more fossil gas pipelines. So far the number of charging points has kept pace with demand, but the coming electric surge needs to be supercharged by vastly expanding the charging network.”

T&E says that the upcoming revision of the EU’s Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Directive is the critical moment for the European Commission to help drivers charge smoothly across the bloc and help businesses ride the electrification wave. It needs to be reviewed this year and should be turned into a regulation with ambitious targets to ensure a swift and harmonised roll-out of chargers throughout Europe.