As of last year, Europe has woken up to the need for building an independent energy system and accelerating the adoption of renewables. As providers of some of the lightest electric bikes on the market, we are a part of this shift. This is because every e-bike user has an environmental impact on their energy choices. We’ve had ups and downs in switching our own energy to renewables, and in this post, we’ll break down some of our key challenges and choices. By sharing our guidelines for assessing suppliers, we hope to pave the way for our customers as well to make contracts for cleaner energy.
The beginning of our energy transition
We are based in 4 countries across Europe, from Estonia to Switzerland. First things first, we started mapping our current energy suppliers in each location; who they are and what are the current energy sources they use. The next step was to look into switching to renewables. Here’s when things got tricky. In some locations, our landlords hold the information and the legal right to change energy contracts.
We went back to the planning board and changed the approach so we could find a way to still support the energy transition with our own actions. In Estonia, our facility team invested in Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to promote the market switch from dirty energy to renewables. (More about that coming.)
We got off to a great start when we opened our new Berlin showroom. The building has been heated with Naturstrom since the day the doors opened. However, we’ve been adapting to cleaner energy consumption while the energy markets in Germany have been in a volatile state. Though some firms see record profits others are going bankrupt. Due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the firm moral stance of impeding Russian oil, much of Europe is in a precarious position with high bills to pay. We are left like many others looking for solutions that will keep us progressively supporting clean energy.
What can we and our customers do?
This year, we designed our first guidelines for buying cleaner energy as part of our Internal Purchase Policy. It’s a simple list that acts as a guide. Like any business we need to keep profits in mind so we can develop further and keep selling bikes, but the policy aims to make sure that we consider the environmental impact along with costs.
We applied a few principles and questions to determine which energy supplier to use for our operations. Here’s how the list currently looks:
- Do they provide 100% clean, renewable energy?
- Do they provide proof of origin for renewables?
- Have they fully stopped using fossil fuels?
- Have they stopped fossil fuel expansion?
- Do they support new renewable energy projects?
- Do they provide or support community-based renewable energy?
- Do they cause any unnecessary harm (e.g., to people, to biodiversity)?
- If fossil fuels are used, do they have a corporate target for carbon emission reduction, in line with the 1.5°C targets (as set in the Paris Agreement)?
- If fossil fuels are used, do they have a corporate target for renewable energy generation?
- If fossil fuels have been phased out, have they locked in the assets to ensure these emissions are never released (instead of selling them to another corporate to dig up and burn)?
Many green electricity tariffs do not help the energy transition because they do not contribute to the construction of new solar or wind energy plants. The most transparent way to ensure such an expansion benefit is binding investments by the green power provider in new energy transition projects – and depending on the electricity sales to customers… With us, for example, one cent flows into new green electricity plants for every kilowatt hour consumed by customers. This support for new plants is tested and certified by the Green Electricity label, which is backed by the major environmental associations: BUND and NABU.
Tim Loppe, press spokesman at naturstrom AG
At Ampler, changing the energy source for each of our locations is a company-wide effort. A key person in achieving this is Virgo Kadastik, our Project Manager in Estonia. He is helping to manage the environmental impact of our facilities and looks for two things in regard to energy: efficiency and switching to renewables. At our assembly factory, our biggest facility, the choice has been to buy RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates). These guarantee the origin of renewable energy fed into the grid and help to promote the production of renewables.
“Using renewable energy sources without taking a deep look into efficiency is only half of the solution,” says Virgo. “In our facilities, we are using the full potential of BAS (Building Automation Systems) with continuous improvements, to make sure that our buildings are heated, ventilated and lighted up to a needed level and only when we are present. Ventilating unoccupied buildings could add up to 40% of the utility fees.”
On top of this, we encourage our team members to use cleaner transportation by offering free charging for electric cars and bikes. All our team members also have their own Ampler e-bikes as company rides.
Back when we did our life cycle analysis for our e-bike, Stellar, we found that approximately 13% of the carbon footprint of the bike is caused by electricity consumption. This can differ depending on the carbon intensity of the grid. Hopefully, our list of questions can help navigate the choices between energy suppliers and create a more positive impact. We’ve also found a few resources that our customers could use: a comparison of green electricity providers (in Germany) and guidance on understanding what is green electricity. Certainly, there are more resources, but we found these as good starting points to dive into the possibilities for choosing better.
A way to go
While we have just designed our procurement policy for energy and the search for cleaner and cost-efficient choices is ongoing in this turbulent market environment, this is one step towards scaling up environmentally conscious thinking across the whole business. Still, we have some way to go until we can truly say, “Hey, we’re running 100% on renewables!” However, it is our goal to switch fully to energy produced from cleaner sources.
But, no matter where each company is on their path to impact, we believe sharing our challenges, progress and resources are more beneficial than not doing so.