Business Actions

actions for Business

As a customer, we want to support businesses that care about fighting climate change. Not just companies that talk the talk. Greenwash sucks! don’t do it. But the companies that change their products and how they do business to help improve the world, rather than causing it to burn. That is attractive. Here you will find some ideas for Business actions to fight climate change. Both actions for businesses to take and actions for customers.

As a business owner, its not just about the money, its about serving your community, creating value for customers and being a good corporate citizen with a respectable reputation for doing the right thing. Step up and use your company’s resources to fight climate change.

Customer Reviews

If you see a business that is doing the right thing, Give them a review and highlight how they are helping fight climate change, OR engage the business to give them the opportunity to learn and respond.
Learn How

Avoid Greenwashing

Greenwash is all about image, optics, looking and sounding good. Saying the right words. and not much else It’s like a garbage truck painted green. No substance all image. Avoid Greenwash because it undermines the real good your company might be doing
Defined Here

Promote Climate Friendly behaviour with your customers

Provide EV chargers in the good parking spots, don’t sell single-use plastic bags, support the use of refillable containers, provide recycling and compost receptacles. Get your whole team onboard by brainstorming together and implementing their ideas. Big, small, it all helps.
More examples

Social Media Engagement

Social Media, is a great place for customers and businesses to engage. Do you see an opportunity for a company to do more for the climate? Let them know. Additionally, you are starting a public conversation and allowing the company to choose to step up and do the right thing. One of my earliest engagements was asking solo cup to put the recycling symbol on their cups (they already had it planned)
Check out "Climate Pledge"

Green your Suppliers

Use your business’s buying power to request that your suppliers green their business. From reducing packaging to offering greener products, to reducing shipping distance and making it free of fossil fuels. Your supply chain wants to keep your business. Use your voice to guide them to strategies that decarbonize.
Green your supply chain

Green your Operations

Think about the people and buildings and activities your company engages in.  Try to eliminate fossil fuels from that equation and you will make a positive change to fight climate change.

  • Heat space & water with renewable electricity 

  • Cook with electricity, not gas

  • Fuel vehicles with electricity, not gasoline or diesel.
  • Support telecommuting for your staff
  • Make your fleet vehicles electric
  • Don’t provide a “gas allowance”
More Ideas

Make a commitment and Keep it

Commit to green actions that might seem out of reach at the moment. Sourcing your electricity from renewables by end of 2025, replacing your fleet with EVs by end of 2027, switching to sustainable suppliers etc. Taking jobs within 50km and refusing to have your staff spend hours driving each day.  Suggest renewable energy appliances over polluting ones.  There are many commitments your company can make to be a force for good in fighting climate change and your customers can hear about it.

Learn More

Check your Bank

Customers and businesses alike don’t want their savings being used to cause global warming. Not all banks are equally green/evil etc… Check your bank then you can influence them or move your money. (they hate that 😉 )
Check Your Bank Now

Green your Products

Definitely don’t sell things that cause customers to burn fossil fuels. Challenge your suppliers to lower their carbon footprint, reduce shipping distances, reduce reliance on petroleum in your products. Make your products recyclable, make them last, make them efficiently. Make them useful. If they are financial products make them free from fossil fuel companies.
Google it 🙂

Friendly Competition

Encourage your competitors to also fight climate change with you. Start an alliance. Share strategy. Green your industry.
Green Your Industry

Suggestions for Energy Stations

In Norway and other parts of the world “Energy Stations” are emerging as society moves past outdated polluting technologies and transitions off of diesel and gasoline for transportation.  We’ve gathered some key insights needed by Energy stations and EV Charging networks to help them succeed in this transition.

Interoperability

The single biggest barrier to effective EV charging in BC is interoperability and the need for multiple plugs, multiple apps, multiple cards and multiple account balances because people never know what charger will be working or available.

I encourage businesses to reach out to other EV charging operators. BC Hydro, FLO, ChargePoint, EV go, Shell recharge, Petro Canada, on the go etc.  Build those interoperability agreements.  We recommend that you make your charging  so that your charging card & app works on their chargers and theirs works on yours.  Don’t try to build a walled garden…  People will just go to the open networks because they work more easily.

NACS is being built into most EVs starting in 2025 (this year).  Make sure your stations are ready to charge using NACS. This also helps you serve the 50% of North American EVs that are Tesla. 

On a recent trip to the Netherlands, my taxi driver explained that his EV (they have a lot there!) could be charged at any charging network’s charger using a single key fob.  He showed me his Shell “recharge” key fob. According to him, the government required the companies to work together to make the payment process easy for EV charging.  Make it easy

Reliability

Electrical equipment mercifully has very few moving parts.  With modern communications, your support staff can be informed in minutes when chargers go offline.  With automation, chargers can reboot and self-test.  We have the technology.  We need to put it to good use to provide drivers with a good experience.
 
In contrast, not only does charger unreliability leave drivers stranded and searching for alternatives in the moment, but in the longer term it also creates the impression that charging may not always be available (at your station), even if it appears on a map.  Would you like your customers to feel confidence or anxiety when someone mentions your brand?
 
Industry has an example to follow.  Tesla Superchargers are almost never down.  Their reliability is reported at 99.95%  Make it easy

EV charging as a core business

Embrace the role of “energy station” as they are called in Norway, rather than just being a “gas station.” that has a couple of chargers.  Thanks for your work to move us out of the dark ages into an era of clean transportation.  But we need to do better. 

Are the chargers:

  • covered from the rain?
  • convenient or in the corner of the parking lot? 
  • plentiful enough for peak demand? 

Gas pumps have been ubiquitous and we need to find reliable and available EV chargers everywhere.  Every location you have should have EV chargers so that your customers associate your brand with charging, and not some special amenity that isn’t guaranteed to be there.  Make it easy

Speed

We recommend that you do it right. Don’t be cheap. Install proper Fast Chargers with the necessary electrical upgrades from the start.
Some EV Charger operators rely on tricks like chargers with batteries (because they lack adequate electrical supply.)  When constantly charging these chargers switch to “conservation mode” which slows charging.  (OK for remote locations that can’t get the power supply, but unsuitable for urban or highway adjacent charging).

Level 2 chargers are fine for parking your car at the library and getting a charge while you browse the books, but for highway access and energy stations that people use en-route, Level 3 DC fast chargers are needed.  Build the necessary electrical infrastructure up front so that your chargers can deliver full power and a great charging experience.

If you can, build tap to charge and “plug and go” into your chargers, so people aren’t fiddling with logins and apps and account balances.  Don’t charge people a premium for tap and charge without having “your account”.  Make it easy.

App updates & Logins

Some EV charging operators insist on apps to get charging going.  This is risky.  Is the customer’s phone dead? Is the app uninstalled by Apple because its been a while since they visited? and now they need to download it again over mobile data.  Does the app insist on an upgrade while the customer is standing in the rain? Did the app “log them out” for no apparent reason so they need to find that password and type their password while the rain falls on their phone screen messing up their typing?

If you have customers that have sought out your chargers, downloaded, installed and set up an account for your app,  logged in and loaded a balance.  They are working very hard to do business with you. Don’t log them out when you push an app update to their phones.  Leave them logged in so they can activate their charging without hassle. Make it easy