Factoring in Electrical Vehicle Charging in Building Design

25 Jan 2022

At Varming Consulting Engineers Limited, we’ve seen many new building design concepts arrive over the last 75 years and a recent innovation from the automotive world - Electric Vehicles (EVs) has led to one of the latest - EV charging points. This new type of automobile has exploded in popularity over the last year, with the industry getting ready to completely phase out diesel and petrol cars over the next two decades.

The plan as it stands is to achieve net zero carbon on Ireland’s roads by 2050, with all new petrol and diesel cars to be banned by 2030. Clearly, this is going to require a significant increase in EV charging points in buildings across the country over the coming years and this is an ambition that’s shared by many different EU nation states who all want cleaner air in their cities.

New Government Rules Announced

Illustrating the Irish government’s commitment to achieving this goal, Darragh O’Brien - Minister for Housing - recently announced that new buildings, in addition to buildings undergoing major renovation works, will now be required to include EV charging points if more than 10 car parking spaces are included. 

Further to this, all existing buildings having more than 20 car parking spacing (aside from residential properties) need to have EV charging points installed by 1st January 2025. There are some caveats, however, as there are some exemptions for SMEs and for buildings constructed or renovated prior to March 10th 2021.

During his statement, Mr O’Brien also stated that the lack of recharging infrastructure is a major barrier to the adoption of EVs within the EU and that these new guidelines form part of the requirements set out as part of the EU’s building energy performance directive.

Fully Prepared For the Road Ahead

Our building services design consultants are fully prepared for the need to factor in EV charging in all new construction and renovation works going forwards. There’s clearly a lot of work to be done to achieve the ambitious plans for net zero carbon on our roads by 2050. 

We know that our M & E engineers will adapt to these changes - as they always have - whilst continuing to deliver world-class solutions on all of our client projects - past examples of which can be found on our website.

If you’d like to know more about us and our past projects, visit us online today at www.varming.ie or give our Dublin HQ a call on 01 4872300 where a member of our expert team will be more than happy to assist.

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