ZAGREB, April 24, 2018 - State-secretary in the Ministry of Environment Protection and Energy Ivo Milatić said on Tuesday that the ministry was working intensively on increasing the number of charging stations for electric vehicles and recalled that a public call for co-financing the purchase of energy efficient vehicles had been advertised.
Milatić, who was participating at an e-mobility conference organised by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Croatia, together with Hrvatski Telekom, Mitsubishi Motors and Porsche Croatia, underscored that the technology of producing electrical energy from the sun, wind and water was becoming more accessible and feasible which is one of the reasons why electrical mobility is the direction to head for in transportation.
He explained that the transport sector accounts for one-third of the consumption of final energy in Croatia, whereby a little less than 90% of the energy used in transport in Croatia is either diesel or petrol.
He recalled a public call was advertised on April 18, valued at 12 million kuna, to co-finance the purchase of energy efficient vehicles whereby the amount granted can be up to 40% of eligible costs of the purchase of the vehicle, with the upper limit of the government grant for a vehicle being 80,000 kuna.
Over the past few years, the ministry has been intensively working on amending legislation on bio-fuel even though this task was neglected by the past two governments which has made it impossible to achieve the set goals, he added.
AmCham executive director Andrea Doko Jelušić said that this is the third AmCham event on the topic of e-mobility organised by the chamber and that it was important that Croatia kept up with trends.
According to European Commission data, Doko Jelušić said, in 2011 there were 9,400 newly-registered plug-in electric vehicles in the European Union, whereas in 2016 the number was 157,000. With reference to charging stations, in 2011 there were 3,800 station whereas in 2016 the number of EV charging stations throughout the EU grew to 91,000.
In July 2017, the state-run power provider HEP stated that it had installed 46 "ELEN" charging stations in Croatia. HEP is also making plans to install first high-power fast-charging stations for electric vehicles along motorways within the TEN-T corridor.
