Thousands more EV charging stations needed in Metro Vancouver to meet growing demand: report

A new report says Metro Vancouver will need thousands more charging stations worth up to $2.9 billion in order to support electric vehicle (EV) demand by 2050. 

The report, presented at Metro Vancouver's Climate Action Committee earlier this month, says there has been a strong uptake in EVs, and that momentum is expected to grow.

Morgan Braglewicz, an air quality planner at Metro Vancouver and the author of the report, told CBC News the goal in putting together the findings was to ensure all levels of government are doing their part to create enough charging stations to meet rising demand. 

"This is a kind of range to give us a sense of what we're shooting for to support some of those planning and investment decisions that are needed in order to move this along," Braglewicz said.

"It's going to be a case of working together to build that system."

Barriers to expansion

This week, the province said it intends to have all new cars sold in B.C. be zero emission by 2035, five years ahead of its original 2040 target. 

Braglewicz says there are two main obstacles to expanding EV use: cost of the vehicles themselves, and access to charging. 

"The biggest challenge that we, the regional level, are working on trying to solve right now is to ensure that people are able to buy an EV without having to worry about [access to charging] being a barrier," she said.

To make that transition easier for residents, the province says it will invest $26 million in 250 new public, light-duty, fast-charging stations, adding to the more than 3,800 public charging stations already in existence in B.C.

But the Metro Vancouver report says over the next 30 years Metro Vancouver alone will need up to 7,700 fast charging ports and up to 97,600 Level 2 ports — special EV charging stations that provide power faster than a standard outlet. 

Currently, according to the report, Metro Vancouver has 270 fast charging ports and 1,660 Level 2 ports.

The province says it's aware of the Metro Vancouver report, and its targets are in line with those numbers. Rebates are in place for homes and workplaces to add more chargers, and targets for charging stations will increase with demand. 

Retrofitting and other challenges

Many municipalities across the region have mandated that new buildings include EV charging stations in their infrastructure.

The bigger challenge, according to the Metro Vancouver report, will be retrofitting the region's older multi-family homes. According to the report, there are 22,396 retrofitted parking spaces in multifamily buildings. By 2050, that number is expected to rise to 353,754. 

Part of the challenge in expanding EV charging, Braglewicz says, is that the responsibility lies across multiple levels of government and agencies — from municipalities to the province and B.C. Hydro.

Werner Antweiler, a professor of economics at UBC's Sauder School of Business, agrees that retrofitting older multiunit buildings poses the biggest challenge for the region. 

Across the greater Vancouver census area, only 27.7 per cent of homes are detached houses. 

The province introduced new rules earlier this year to make it easier for condo stratas to install EV charging infrastructure, but Antweiler says no such updates were made to older rental buildings. 

"There is no equivalent legislation that can be just changed to compel landlords to do the same," he said.

Power surge

There are also a lot of people who don't have a dedicated parking space and rely on street parking. 

"People would like to charge at home but they just cannot because they can't just run a power cable halfway down the street to their car," he said.

Besides the convenience, charging EVs at home has the added benefit of using power at night when there is less demand. 

Antweiler says B.C. Hydro should be able to handle the surge in power demands created by EV charging, especially once the Site C dam is completed. The bigger challenge will be to manage when that demand happens during peak times.  

B.C. Hydro says there are more than 120,000 EVs across the province, and it predicts that number to grow to up to 900,000 within the next decade. 

"When Site C is up and running in the coming years, it will provide British Columbians with an additional eight per cent of our current supply, which is enough to power 1.7 million electric vehicles per year," the company said in an email. 

B.C. Hydro also said it continues to add to its public charging network across the province, including 3,000 charging ports over the next 10 years. The company also offers rebates to purchase EVs or install chargers.