Four new electric vehicle chargers opened at the Nanaimo Airport on Monday, through a joint federal and provincial effort.
The project cost for the four fast chargers totalled $400,000, with the province and Nanaimo Airport each contributing $100,000 and the federal government picking up the remaining $200,000 tab.
“Canadians want greener options to get to where they need to go,” said Seamus O’Regan Jr. Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources.
“We’re giving it to them. This is how we get to net zero by 2050.”
Nanaimo Airport President and CEO Dave Devana says the chargers are now available for free public use until July 2nd, 2021.
The airport will then evaluate the project’s progress to determine how the chargers will be used in future.
“We’re not looking to make money off this,” Devana said in an interview with Victoria Buzz.
“We’re going to evaluate how much electricity these things use and go from there. It’s not a profit thing we’re trying to accomplish here.”
Two of the level-three chargers are located in the main parking lot of the airport, while the other two level-three chargers are in the rental car parking area.
Devana says these chargers can provide a range for most Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) of up to 400 kilometres off one hour of charging.
“We’ve found that a lot of our customers that come from the south or the north that have electric vehicles are not able to get a charge to go home,” the CEO said.
“This is going to be a great asset to those people. We feel that this helps us do our part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions related to the operation of the airport.”
