ACT government offices await specialty EV charging stations

Plans are under way to install 80 charging stations across Civic and 35 stations across Dickson.

An ACT government spokeswoman said the stations would help to service fleet operation of the cars in the Civic and Dickson buildings but not all would be inside the underground car parks.

But the ACT government started moving its fleet, where possible, to zero-emission vehicles last year.

It's part of a bigger push from the ACT government to "significantly expand" the number of zero-emission vehicles in the city.

As part of the parliamentary agreement, the government has floated that it wants to adopt a new target for all ACT car sales to be zero-emission by 2030.

The ACT government's office building in the $300 million Constitution Place development in Civic was completed this year. The Dickson office, part of a $160 million development, was completed mid-last year.

Concerns have been raised about the lack of electric charging stations, which were addressed by Greens backbencher Jo Clay in the ACT Legislative Assembly earlier this year.

Ms Clay said she was unable to charge her electric car in the Civic building, where MLAs park, and asked Chief Minister Andrew Barr if going forward all ACT government projects would "appropriately accommodate" electric vehicles.

Mr Barr said there were some "standard household" power points in the level one basement of the building but these were not the fast-charging ones for electric vehicles.

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He said priority would be given to electric vehicle charging stations in the public areas of the car park. There are 560 parks in the building and 225 of those are for public use.

"I would say that the biggest priority in terms of the 50 charging points is that they would be publicly accessible for everyone, not just behind the gates for MLAs," Mr Barr said.

"So in looking at where an EV charging point or points could be made in that public car park we would probably look outside the MLA compound, frankly."

Staff have also struggled for desk space in the Civic and Dickson buildings as it was only built to accommodate 80 per cent of workers at any one time, and due to COVID-19 social distancing restrictions 40 per cent of workstations are unable to be used at present.

To help staff find available desks, colleagues and book a meeting room the territory government paying a contractor more than $720,000 to create a "wayfinding system".

Both offices were built on "activity based working" principles, which stipulate that since people perform different activities in their day-to-day work they required a variety of work settings.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated 35 electric charging stations would be built in the Dickson office building and 80 charging stations would be built in the Civic office building. This was incorrect, the ACT government has plans to build 35 charging stations across the suburb of Dickson and 80 across Civic.

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