| Abstract |
Around 30% of the EU’s population live in rural areas, but rural areas account for 83% of the total EU area. In the long-term vision for the EU’s rural areas and the EU Rural Action Plan, one of the flagship initiatives is related to rural mobility and to overcoming the challenge of sustainable multimodal mobility. Electric mobility has seen an important uptake in urban areas. EV charging infrastructure has also developed rapidly but only in cities and along main roads because they build better business cases for commercial operators. The electric charging infrastructure reflects this in rural areas, where drivers may experience a level of “range anxiety”, the concern that vehicles will not be able to travel the distance needed, due to a lack of EV charging points. This range anxiety might result in many cases in choosing other conventional transport options. Rural local authorities usually install (subsidized) EV charging points primarily for awareness raising purposes but very often these actions are poorly coordinated and lack a clear strategy on how to systematically develop and operate the network both on local and regional level. In general, LAs are facing significant challenges related to three key areas: funding, technical expertise and coordination with network companies, part of which could be alleviated by improving the awareness, capacities and policy framework. To address this, there is a clear need to help rural and remote local authorities in Mediterranean Europe develop their policy framework and capacities that will help their communities to use EV technology. This proposal will allow to:
-Reduce the impact of transport in rural areas, allowing the involved municipalities to reduce their CO2 emissions
-Support the integrated planning and financing of EV charging infrastructure and public shared EV rental scheme
-Support and promote low carbon mobility, meeting energy goals and carbon neutrality
-Improve the connection of urban and remote rural areas |
