When you go shopping for your next automobile, will an electric vehicle be in your consideration set? Electric vehicles are becoming more reliable and less expensive to purchase, and they become relatively less expensive to operate every time prices rise at the gas pump.
Better yet, owning an electric vehicle means never stopping at a gas station to fill up your tank again. Most electric vehicle drivers, whether residential or commercial, charge their vehicles overnight without taking a moment out of their day.
Best of all, electric vehicles emit zero pollutants into the air. In fact, they don’t even have exhaust pipes because they don’t produce any exhaust. They produce less greenhouse gases and less pollution than ordinary gas- or diesel-powered cars.
Electric vehicles need solar energy in order to be zero emission.
But the environmental value of electric vehicles is somewhat overblown. They are not “clean” vehicles because they require electricity produced by power plants that run on fossil fuels. Charging an electric vehicle requires the local utility to burn more coal, natural gas or oil.
By offering electric vehicle charging from your company’s own solar power plant, you can not only significantly reduce your carbon footprint, but also stop paying the current astronomical gas prices at the pump.
Solar power is totally clean, zero-emission, zero marginal-cost power that helps businesses slash expenditures and reduce or eliminate their reliance on the power grid. Many company solar arrays produce more energy than they need to run the business, energy they can sell back to the local utility.
Solar and electric vehicles are the future
Over the next two decades you will see automobile companies transition to all-electric fleets. It will be nearly impossible to buy a new car that runs on gasoline sometime in the not-too-distant future. This increases the responsibility of businesses to consider solar, not only to power their plant or office operations but to charge employee and/or company cars.
Electric vehicles can be fully charged from regular wall outlets in seven hours and from fast chargers in half-an-hour. Alder can help customers installing solar to add charging stations as well.
The cost saving and environmental value of charging the company’s fleet of vehicles is significant. Imagine the value to employees of a company that offers free charging of personal vehicles right there in the parking lot. At Alder, we have this very setup at our facility, running car charging off our solar array.
Solar and electric vehicles are part of an ESG program.
Combining solar with electric vehicles is a massive step forward for companies with serious ESG (environmental, social and governance) commitments because transportation tends to be a major component of its environmental impact. Switching to solar to generate electricity for electric vehicles demonstrates to customers and employees alike that your company is committed to moving towards a carbon-neutral future.
That is not just good for the environment; it’s good for business. An international study of 20,000 consumers published by grocery giant Unilever discovered one in three people were choosing to buy from brands they believe are committed to going green.
Switching the company fleet to electric vehicles is a good first step in an effort to reducing a firm’s carbon footprint. Combining that with solar power, on top of all the cost-saving benefits, dramatically increases the value of eliminating gas powered engines.
Interested in learning more about solar? Contact us here today.
