Petrol retailing and refining giant Ampol has landed another $100 million from the federal government to help roll out a further 200 electric vehicle fast charging bays by 2025, and to pursue efforts on renewable fuels and other technologies.
The new funds are being delivered as a loan through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), and will also support hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, (if it can find any hydrogen cars), and solar PV installations at its retail and charging sites.
Ampol has previously landed grants from both the NSW state government and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to begin its rollout of EV fast charging stations under the AMPCharge brand.
However, it fell well short of its target of reaching more than 180 charging bays by the end of 2023, with just 82 charging bays installed across 36 sites.
In the company’s 2023 annual report, it blamed delays with grid connections and landowners.
“Despite our best efforts the pace of the rollout was impacted by the time taken to obtain approval to make the electrical connection across numerous network service providers and other development approvals including working with third party landowners,” it wrote.
“This meant that only 82 bays were able to go live during 2023 with many more in various stages of completion.
We continue to manage the approvals processes as we continue to expand the EV charging network during 2024.”
It had aimed to reach 300 charging bays by the end of 2024, although it is not clear how many of those will be delivered on time.
In April this year it announced a deal with shopping centre owner Stockland to locate more than 100 EV charging bays.
The new funding comes a day after the CEFC announced a $20 million investment in Splend to help it support another 500 EVs for car sharing.
Climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen says more EV charging infrastructure is essential as the number of EVs grow, and the announcement also coincided with an update of the federal governments National EV strategy.
“There are more than 200,000 EVs on our roads, with more and more choice of affordable to buy and run EVs coming into the market” Bowen said.
“There are now 22 EV models selling for under $60,000 in Australia, up from 14 models in 2022.
“With more Australians opting for cheaper-to-run EVs we need to make sure we’re keeping up with demand for charging.
We’ve already seen growth in EV charging locations from 464 in December 2022 to around 900 at the beginning of 2024.”
The funding deal with Ampol also includes rooftop solar.
It has been installing around 50 kWQ of rooftop solar capacity at each of its retail locations that host EV chargers.
Up to the end of last year, 25 locations had solar panels installed.
The funding also includes its renewable fuels programs, including the newly announced feasibility study into a significant renewable fuels production facility at Ampol’s Lytton refinery in Brisbane, where it is looking to produce low carbon liquid fuels including Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel.
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