COMOX VALLEY, B.C- The Comox Valley Regional District board meeting last night brought up that electric car charging stations may be coming soon.
The board is supporting the idea to install eight Level 2 EV (electric vehicle) charging stations.
The Level 2 is 240 volts. It is typically used while at home, work and while you are shopping.
The station would be put in at the Comox Valley Regional District facilities open for the public.
The estimated cost is $40,000.
The District is supporting the application for the grant. This supports the Comox Valley Public Electric Vehicle Charging Station Project.
Overall the project would be put through CleanBC Clean Communities Fund also with the Regional District of Nanaimo as the lead applicant.
There would also be opportunities for further collaboration with more mid-Island local governments.
In 2018 CleanBC released one of their main goals is to reduce climate pollution.
They put out more ideas on their website;
“reducing climate pollution by shifting homes, vehicles, industry and business off burning fossil fuels and toward greater use of clean B.C. electricity and other renewable energies; becoming a destination for new investment and industry looking to meet the growing global demand for low-carbon products, services and pollution-reducing technologies.”
Electric vehicles do apply to the goal. The kind of energy going into these vehicles reduce the emissions that get released with gas cars.
If the grant application is approved the $40,000 will be going into the Comox Valley EV Charging Station Project in the 2020 financial plan.
It was also brought up to install two of the public charging stations to be included in the construction of the new Comox Valley Regional District corporate office in 2019.
The cost of that will be $23,000.
That cost would be coming from the contingency fund from building the new office building.
The final suggestion was taking the $9,000 of unused funds from the 2015 Community Carbon Offset fund to be put into the development of Comox Valley electric vehicles strategy.
The board has granted approval for application to the CleanBC Communities Fund Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) as part of a mid-Island collaboration to support the procurement and installation of Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations for public use at Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) facilities.
