Grand Bay-Westfield gets more EV chargers through Earth Day grant
The mayor of Grand Bay-Westfield says the town will be able to check off a climate adaptation goal after it received a $60,000 grant for electric vehicle chargers.
The town was one of eight municipalities receiving EV charging stations in 2024 from the Charged for Change program led by Earth Day Canada with insurance firm Aviva Canada, according to a press release last week. The town will be installing four Level 2 chargers at the Saint John Transit stop near the River Valley Community Centre and one more at the Brundage Point River Centre, which has had one since 2016, mayor Brittany Merrifield said Friday.
Merrifield said climate adaptation is a plank of the town's strategic plan, and the grant helps it achieve a project in their 2018 greenhouse gas and energy action plan.
"It's kind of exciting, because ... one of the projects that came out of that was to increase the number of our EV charging stations to five," she said. "Now in 2024 we're up to six, so we can check that box on that project."
The existing charger at the centre gets about 20 to 25 hours per month, Merrifield said. She said she's heard feedback from a number of different residents that more are needed, as well as tourists.
EV drivers taking trips plan out their routes in places with robust infrastructure, Merrifield said, making the town a "better value proposition."
She said they identified spots for the chargers that had "appropriate space for them as well as (were) highly visible."
She said that development officer David Taylor was behind the town's successful application, and he's "taken the lead" on many of the climate adaptation initiatives.
The town had a goal of reducing its corporate emissions by nine per cent by 2025 and has reached its target, Merrifield said. The next goal is to reduce community emissions by seven per cent by 2025 and 14 per cent by 2035, she said, with assessment of that goal planned early next year.
"With greater adoption of EVs by our residents and more robust infrastructure that will help them say yes, this is how I want to move around in the future, this will help us get further down the road to meeting that target," Merrifield said.
The Charged for Change program is a three-year, $3-million partnership between Earth Day Canada and Aviva Canada that started last year with seven Ontario municipalities and opened to the rest of the country this year, according to the press release.
“The collective transition to electromobility is a key part of the global climate change solution," Earth Day Canada executive director Valérie Mallamo is quoted as saying in the release. "We’re grateful to be able to work alongside Aviva Canada to support the installation of public EV charging stations in rural municipalities that want to increase the opportunities and reduce the anxieties around EV adoption for residents."
Kedgwick, Hautes-Terres, Bois-Jolie and Cap-Acadie were the other New Brunswick municipalities to receive grants this year, according to the release.
Andrew Bates, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Telegraph-Journal
