May 5 (SeeNews) - Be Charge, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Italy's Eni Plenitude, will receive over 100 million euro ($109.9 million) to build a European high-speed electric vehicle (EV) charging network across eight EU member states, including Slovenia and Greece, the parties to the deal said on Friday.
Under the deal, Be Charge will get a loan of 50 million euro from Italian development bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), the parties said in a press release.
The loan will top up a 50.4 million euro grant from the European Commission under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). The EU funding comes after the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) selected Be Charge's project in September as one of 24 projects to promote an environmentally sustainable transport network in Europe and boost EV adoption. The EU has proposed binding legislation, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), which is expected to set requirements such as minimum distance between charging points for the whole EU transport network.
The financing will enable Be Charge to install over 2,000 ultra-fast charging points, with a minimum power of 150 kW along the main European transport corridors of the TEN-T network in Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and Greece.
"This transaction is part of the company’s plan, which currently has more than 15,000 charging points, and aims to develop a high-power European infrastructure for electric vehicles and to double its network by 2026 reaching 30,000 points," said Stefano Goberti, CEO of Plenitude, which is the energy transition business of Milan-listed Italian oil and gas company Eni.
Be Charge has already installed close to 16,000 charge points and has another 11,700 under construction, its website shows. It is already present in Slovenia and Greece.
Europe had 70 000 fast charge points by the end of 2022, or 55% more than a year earlier, according to the Global EV Outlook 2023 report released last week by the International Energy Agency.
($ = 0.9101 euro)