Luxembourg MPs Give Green Light to Electromobility Aid Scheme

On Tuesday 5 July 2022, the Chamber of Deputies (Luxembourg Parliamnet) adopted Bill 7925 relating to the aid scheme for companies investing in charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.

The new aid scheme aims to further stimulate the development of electromobility in Luxembourg. The new subsidy measures aim to boost business investment in the installation of private or publicly accessible charging infrastructure.

The new aid applies to the installation of charging stations accessible to the public and private charging stations in businesses. They thus constitute a coherent set of measures allowing Luxembourg to achieve an efficient network of charging points throughout the national territory. They complement the aid scheme for the installation of charging stations for private individuals, as well as the national network of terminals accessible to the public "Chargy" and "SuperChargy".

Details of the new measures

• The first type of aid, which benefits all companies regardless of their size, is awarded following a call for projects open to charging infrastructure projects accessible to the public and private, whose charging capacity is at least equal at 175 kilowatts. The projects that will be selected will be able to benefit from a subsidy of up to 50% of the investments related to the deployment of the charging stations. A weighting ensures that the projects most accessible to the public are favoured in the selection procedure.
• The second aid instrument is reserved for small and medium-sized enterprises and aims to facilitate their transition to electromobility as part of their economic activity. On simple request, SMEs can benefit from a subsidy of up to 50% of the costs related to the charging stations and up to 60% of the costs related to the connection to the electricity network. The aid is capped at €60,000 for the costs of connection to the electricity network and €40,000 for other costs linked to the deployment per company.

In order not to penalise companies that use leasing solutions for the deployment of charging stations accessible to the public or private, they will also be able to benefit from the aforementioned aid in the form of a discount on the leasing contract.

The text also provides for an adaptation of the financing of the "Chargy" and "SuperChargy" network in accordance with the new European legislative framework.

Luxembourg's Minister of Energy, Claude Turmes, underlined: “The decarbonisation of transport is conditional on the existence of a dense network of charging points on the national territory. Luxembourg already has a very dense network of charging points. By enabling more players to benefit from subsidies for setting up charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, we are accelerating the development of electromobility".

Economy Minister Franz Fayot said: “This new aid scheme is an additional concrete action to encourage companies to gradually convert their fleet to zero-carbon vehicles. In addition, more generally, the aid scheme further promotes electromobility by accelerating the deployment of charging stations for electric vehicles whose network currently has nearly 1,300 charging points accessible to the public. The number of electric cars is increasing more and more, with 20.5% of new registrations in 2021 and a plus of 23.7% for the first four months of this year".

Support for companies and municipalities through methodological support, information sheets and standard contracts

All the information relating to these new aid measures can be consulted online via: https://guichet.public.lu/fr/entreprises/financement-aides/aides-infrastructures-charge-vehicules-electriques.html. The application forms that must be completed to apply for this aid via MyGuichet.lu will soon be available online.

Luxinnovation, the national innovation agency, offers a first point of contact for companies interested in investing in charging infrastructure, at the following e-mail address: aides@luxinnovation.lu. The agency offers support on the administrative side, in particular for the verification of eligibility criteria and the use of aid application forms.

On the technical aspect of their project, companies, especially in the case of projects that are not stabilised from a technical point of view, will be able to rely on the support of the Klima-Agence, which can be reached via email: e-mobility@klima-agence.lu. Technical information sheets are also made available by the Klima-Agence.

In addition, standard contracts regulating the legal and technical issues of the provision of the municipal public domain for the installation of charging stations by private companies will be made available to the municipalities.

Pro-Charging.lu: a new platform for players who make surfaces available

With Pro-Charging.lu, a new platform has just been launched to support and accelerate the development of charging infrastructures in Luxembourg. This web application, established on the basis of the German FlächenTOOL, allows suppliers (municipalities, unions, companies and individuals) to register their surfaces on an interactive map, while it offers investors the possibility of searching in a targeted manner for surfaces by region, size or other specific characteristics.

The tool, created in close cooperation with the German Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and Transport (BMDV) under the aegis of the federal company NOW GmbH, is made available by the Klima-Agency on behalf of the Ministry of Energy and Regional Planning and the Ministry of the Economy.