Electric vehicles are the way to go but need reliable energy - Sue Webber
As a green energy supporter I’m now on my second electric vehicle (EV), but it seems obvious that if we are to rely on electricity for all our energy needs it needs to be, well, reliable.
Like most flat dwellers without a home charger, I need access to public or communal charging points, and of course I need them to work.
So it was with extreme frustration I discovered on Monday morning that every 50kw charger at the Hermiston park and ride at Riccarton was out of order, so the hunt was on to find one which did before the car ran out of juice.
I reported the fault to ChargePlace Scotland which currently oversees the system before responsibility is passed over to local councils this year, and I received a reply from Robbie in the Service Centre Faults Team which said, “ChargePlace Scotland is coming to an end at the end of this year, so the councils are having to move their units onto new networks. These units have already been migrated to a different network. If you need anything further, please let me know.”
If I needed anything further? Apart from a fully charged battery, of course I needed to know which network and how I could get access.
I knew the system was changing, because as Shadow Transport Secretary it’s my job to know, but how was I or any electric car driver supposed to know the system had “migrated” and payment cards deactivated without any communication? There wasn’t even a message or sign at the charging point.
It appears that as well as being environmentally aware, EV owners were supposed to be telepathic too.
I pointed out to Robbie that the public should not be expected to follow and understand behind-the-scenes changes and such transitions should be seamless for customers, to which he replied they appreciated the feedback and promised to pass it on.
He did offer to find out access details for Riccarton, but by this time two hours had passed and the car was already at home. Later on Monday afternoon I was back at the charging point for an hour.
This kind of experience is sadly not unknown for EV drivers, especially for long trips where charging stations at motorway services are often queued up, yet the UK Labour government is going hell for leather after electricity from renewables to the exclusion of our own fossil fuel reserves, while presiding over the reduction of refining capacity.
It’s true that most high-grade North Sea oil is exported because British refineries don’t produce much petrol and diesel, but it is still a tradeable commodity which, without grid capacity, electricity from renewables isn’t, and we could refine our own fuel if circumstances dictated.
And those circumstances are here now with the war in the Gulf and service stations at home running out, as did the Lanark Road Sainsbury’s last weekend, which no-one has experienced since the fuel duty protests 26 years ago.
These are increasing dangerous times and they call for pragmatism, not the boggle-eyed idealism of Labour’s Net Zero secretary Ed Miliband in Westminster in the SNP here.
In the second World War British people dug for victory and we need to dig deep into our reserves now, not keep them buried beneath the North Sea.