This Oz EV Charger Generates Carbon Credits
After two years of planning and negotiations, a Whyalla veterinary surgery in South Australia has become the first to trial carbon credit generation from an EV fast charger Down Under. Evansa and Noodoe have teamed up with Whyalla Vets principal veterinarian Dr. Melville-Smith to create this innovative, sustainable income stream. More than an income stream for the surgery, it will become a service to the community and fits well with their emphasis on sustainability.
The surgery’s EV fleet (comprised of two Tesla Model Ys and two BYD Atto 3s) will be the first to charge, while the service will also be offered to the public. The installation of the DC charger adds to sustainability projects already undertaken. The surgery uses natural light rather than artificial light through the ingenious use of skylights. They also add a levy to their services as a carbon offset, which is used to grow trees. Their aim is to create zero waste.
The 75 kW Tritium charger is on site and it is expected to be commissioned shortly. It will be fuelled with renewable energy that is heavily present in the South Australian electrical grid. In order to generate carbon credits, Evansa will have to register the charger with Verra, the world leading non-profit carbon offset certifying organisation.
“Thanks to the ‘Powered by Noodoe’ technology partnership, Evansa can integrate its unique decarbonizing platform with Noodoe EV OS to calculate the net carbon offset from the usage of the new charger,” Evansa wrote at the end of March.
“Our innovative ‘Powered by Noodoe’ program is being deployed worldwide with great success, allowing companies to reassess what’s possible when developing or scaling their businesses with the right partner,” says Noodoe Country Manager for Australia Sam Moran. “We knew when we saw the approach that we’d found the people we wanted to work with,” added Evansa executive director and co-founder James Eveland. “Noodoe’s flexibility, persistence, speed of delivery, and full suite of services made it easy for us to start the process, and the ongoing support has been magnificent,” states Eveland.
“Noodoe EV OS is the most flexible EV charging station operating system on the market. Without any human intervention, Noodoe EV OS autonomously runs all operations of the EV charging network, including 24/7 charging service delivery, payment processing, and charger management. Due to real-time automatic monitoring, diagnostics, and recovery, Noodoe EV charging stations deliver one of the highest up times in the industry,” Evansa asserts.
Working together, Evansa and Noodoe plan to take advantage of the environmental and financial benefits accrued from carbon credit generation.
“A carbon credit is a tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit a set amount of carbon dioxide or the equivalent amount of a different greenhouse gas (tCO2e),” Wikipedia summarizes.
“Carbon credits and carbon markets are a component of national and international attempts to mitigate the growth in concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs). One carbon credit is equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide, or in some markets, carbon dioxide equivalent gases. Carbon trading is an application of an emissions trading approach. Greenhouse gas emissions are capped and then markets are used to allocate the emissions among the group of regulated sources.”
I first came across these as an income stream when covering LGI’s mining of landfill for methane. You can read about that here.
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Although it appears that there is some controversy over the issuing and use of carbon credits, Verra tells me: “Individuals, companies, or organizations often cannot, in the short term, completely reduce their GHG emissions. Buying credits on the voluntary carbon market enables them to offset those emissions that, at this point, cannot be avoided. This does more than simply pay another entity to avoid polluting or remove emissions from the atmosphere. Verified Carbon Standard projects also provide access to health services and education and other sustainable development benefits that improve the quality of life in project communities.
“Evansa uses Verra because they are focused on highest quality credits. They follow strict compliance requirements in the voluntary market. The Verra standard is a globally accepted, high integrity system which allows for various carbon credits to be calculated.”
Currently a Verra credit can range in price between roughly $5–10, with some businesses paying more than $10, while the spot price on an Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) sits at $39. Check it out here and here.
Net zero emissions can be achieved by a business using carbon credits. Evansa aggregates eligible projects, like EV chargers running off renewables, to create carbon credits. This will incentivize people to use renewables. DC chargers can become a trackable asset and provide an income stream.
Credits created by Whyalla Vets could be used to offset carbon produced by the surgery to achieve their net zero goal, or they could be sold to other businesses. The surgery will also benefit from the sale of electricity to the public. Evansa charges for the service.
James of Evansa tells me that this is their first “Flagship” project and “we are learning more about the carbon markets as we go.” They hope to give feedback to government to make it easier to access carbon credits for EV charging. Evansa even employs an in-house mathematician to generate models to justify the carbon credit creation. Test scenarios are being designed to model carbon credit generation over a ten-year life of a charger to work out whether it is worth doing.
The government supplies the equations of what carbon credit you get. They have done this in the Human Induced Regeneration (HIR) space with companies such as Regenco, which calculate carbon sequestration through air land regeneration. But Evansa’s mathematician is now working this out for electric vehicles. They are designing net abatement calculators because there are lots of variables to be taken into account — road conditions, weather, vehicle type, and shape.
“Electric Vehicle credits are carbon credits generated using EV charging systems, where greenhouse gas emission reductions are achieved by replacing vehicles that use traditional fossil fuels with electrified vehicles,” SBC Global writes. “In 2018, global carbon standard, Verra, approved a methodology for EV charging systems that provides parameters to calculate emissions reduction. The methodology establishes default factors for project parameters in the US and Canada and is project-specific in other areas.”
Electric vehicle carbon credits were designed around biodiesel, and some government regulations are yet to catch up. Evansa is working on the variables to demonstrate the actual abatement compared to a diesel rebate.
I’ll let Dr. Andrew have the last word: “In essence, we have decided that this generation ……. our generation ……… is going to start paying to clean up the mess. We are saying to our generation, ‘You made the wrong choices and we are not going to follow you. We refuse to pass on the costs to our children as you did to us.’”
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