Swansea Council goes green with electric vehicle drive

Swansea Council will soon have 40 electric vehicles in its fleet, meaning the council will have more electric vehicles on the road than any other local authority in Wales.

The electric vehicles will be used by departments including waste management, highways, facilities and corporate building and property services, who are very regularly on the road in the course of their work.

Work is also ongoing alongside local authority, university and health board partners in Swansea, Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot and Pembrokeshire to explore potentially introducing more charging points of electric vehicles across South West Wales to benefit the public.

To showcase electric and hydrogen vehicle technology, the council held a Clean Air Roadshow in Castle Square earlier this year. The event attracted about 6,000 people.

Andrew Lewis, Swansea Council’s cabinet member for housing, energy and building services, said: “When agreed, this order will increase the amount of electric vehicles in the council's fleet to about 5 per cent, but we're committed to ordering more in future to make sure we continue doing our bit to help Swansea cut its carbon footprint. This is vitally important because we should all be concerned with making Swansea a greener, more sustainable and more environmentally aware city for our children and generations to come. With the Welsh government having set an 80 per cent greenhouse gas emission target, it's pleasing to see Swansea Council setting the right example.

"Having now been the proud personal owner of a zero carbon emission, 100 per cent electric car for the last year or so, I can't speak highly enough about this kind of technology. It's both viable and reliable, so we're also continuing to work alongside our partners to explore the potential to introduce more charging points for vehicles of this kind across South West Wales as a whole in years to come to benefit the public.

“Although electric vehicles are more expensive to buy than diesel vehicles at the moment, a UK government grant is in place to help with the council purchase. Electric vehicles are also far cheaper to run, so the overall cost, when running costs are also taken into account, is comparable with diesel vehicles, while also being much more environmentally friendly.

"Increasing the amount of electric vehicles in Swansea is one of the ways we're showing how seriously we take our commitment to sustainable transport and the preservation of our stunning environment."