Ampol will deliver EV fast charging bays at more than 100 sites across its national retail network.
That covers the Greater Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth regions, as well as Newcastle, Wollongong, Central Coast, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Geelong.
This follows a funding agreement with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) through the Future Fuels Fund (FFF) to deliver a national fast charging network, ARENA co-funding the project to the tune of $7 million.
“Electrification and electric vehicles will play a critical role in reducing emissions across Australia’s transport sector over the coming years,” Ampol managing director and chief executive Matt Halliday says.
“Ampol’s national retail network, along Australia’s major highways and close to existing high-traffic roads, closely matches our country’s population and is strategically located to help minimise range anxiety for EV users.
“We remain confident in our ability to evolve our retail network to support battery electric vehicle adoption.”
The funding announcement follows the release of Ampol’s Future Energy and Decarbonisation Strategy, which outlines a commitment to achieving net zero emissions from operations by 2040 and to investing more than $100 million in future energy projects through to 2025.
Ampol expects that EVs, including battery electric vehicles (BEVs), will play a key role in decarbonising the transport sector and gradually displace internal combustion engines (ICE), particularly in the light passenger fleet, accelerating rapidly after 2030 to become the primary mobility energy source by 2050.
“E-mobility infrastructure is a central pillar to capturing our existing customer base through the energy transition, as we look to expand our role in electricity to make the ease of the current liquid fuels era translate into the future BEV environment,” Halliday says.
“This includes exploring ‘at-forecourt’, ‘at-home’ and ‘at-destination’ solutions.”
Ampol will start on the network in the second half of 2021.
The chosen sites will feature EV chargers supplied with renewable energy or covered by green certificates and will be capable of delivering charge to a BEV at a minimum of 50kW with each site having the capacity to charge two BEVs concurrently.
Ampol was successful in 97% of sites applied for.
