On the first World EV Day, here’s what Good Energy did for electric vehicle drivers
9th September 2020 was the first ever World EV Day, and Good Energy was a partner. Electrifying transport is a huge part of Good Energy’s mission to help tackle climate change. This is what we are doing to accelerate that.
When Juliet Davenport founded Good Energy, more than 20 years ago, energy supply was the highest contributor to the country’s carbon emissions — contributing around 36.5%.
In recent years, the makeup of the UK’s emissions has looked quite different. The carbon footprint of the power sector declined by 55.8% compared to 2000, thanks to the growth in renewables and the almost complete abandonment of heavily polluting coal power. Still a long way to zero, but a big improvement.
Unfortunately, carbon emissions from transport have not followed this trend, remaining relatively flat. This means that transport is now the biggest contributor to climate change in the UK, and our next great climate change challenge.
It is a challenge we will not solve without taking a ‘whole systems’ approach, which electric vehicles (EVs), powered by clean power, are a huge part. That is why Good Energy has been revving up to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.
This is what we are currently working on.
EV drivers tend to charge their vehicles at times when demand for electricity is lower, so price can be lower too.
Making it cheaper to charge at home with 100% genuine clean power
Naturally EV drivers who charge their vehicles at home tend to use more electricity.
We recently launched an EV time of use tariff, a tariff that adapts to the time of day that EV drivers are charging their vehicles. This tends to be at night, when electricity demand is generally lower, meaning it is possible to offer lower rates. This tariff is now closed for new applicants, so sign up to Plugged-In, our EV newsletter to find out when we launch a new EV tariff.
We waited for the advanced SMETS2 meters, which we are rolling out to customers as we speak, before launching this tariff. We want to make it as easy and as cost effective as possible for EV drivers to charge their vehicles with 100% genuine renewable electricity.
If you’re interested in hearing more about upcoming tariffs, register your interest here.
Making charging on-the-go simple with Zap-Map and Zap-Pay
In March 2019, Good Energy made a major investment in Zap-Map — the leading app for EV drivers in the UK — which was then increased to a majority stake in 2020.
Over 250,000 EV drivers use Zap-Map to find and locate chargers up and down the UK — which when you consider there are almost 550,000 pure electric vehicles in the UK, that really does make it the ‘go-to’ app.
However, many EV drivers will tell you that the biggest challenge when it comes to charging their vehicles is not where to do so, but how to pay. Of the UK’s 34k+ charge points there are a multitude of different networks and companies, which generally all have different apps and payment systems.
As the existing go-to app for EV drivers with data from all of the major EV charging networks, this is a problem Zap-Map is perfectly placed to solve, and their plans to address it were one of the exciting reasons we wanted to invest in them.
Zap-Map also has a solution to making paying for EV charging simpler. It’s called Zap-Pay, and this is how it works:
