Statements by forecourt retailer Maxol accompanying its 2021 annual results provided something of a window into how the fossil fuel industry views the climate agenda or at least the way in which the Government is progressing it.

While the McMullan family-owned garage chain is trying to diversify its retail offering in a bid to future-proof its business against an eventual decline in hydrocarbon fuel demand, it is not exactly rushing to replace its pumps with electric vehicle (EV) chargers. Amid reports the Government may scale back its plan to have one million such vehicles on Irish roads by 2030, Maxol chief executive Brian Donaldson told reporters on Tuesday the firm is not minded go out and build EV hubs at its branches in the Republic. “There isn’t a business case to support that,” he said.

EV model

The group is in the process of developing an EV model, Donaldson said, starting north of the Border where it will open the first dedicated charging hub in the jurisdiction next month at Kinnegar, Co Down. One issue with the rollout, however, is grid capacity and the sheer volume of electricity required to operate the five-charger facility, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 12-14 houses, he said. Cost is another factor. Maxol spent a “six-figure sum” getting just a single facility up and running.

Donaldson’s complaints underline some of the tensions within the Government’s Climate Action Plan as it applies to transport and its focus on EVs. The central idea is to shift as much of Ireland’s transport fleet to electric and then move the grid itself towards renewable forms of generation. The trouble is Ireland’s execution of the plan has been, as this week’s Climate Change Performance Index highlighted, mediocre at best compared to much of Europe. Moreover, despite a significant uptick in sales of hybrids and EVs in recent years, demand for fossil-fuelled vehicles remains robust and Donaldson said Maxol doesn’t envisage a significant drop-off in fuel sales until possibly the 2030s. All of this in the same month in which the UN warned that each of the last eight years are likely to have been hotter than any before 2015 as the rate of climate change accelerates.