Episode 031 | October 31, 2022 | 26:01
Guest: —
Published: October 31, 2022
Duration: 26:01
Description
Too many sustainability efforts don t get the prioritization they deserve and should have inside of orgs.
Many times, it s because the efforts were rooted in marketing or PR, which in nature gives it a ROI perspective, but when it becomes rooted in the core business that changes.
In order to succeed ask these three questions:
Is it important and how do I know it s important
Is it a good business case
Who will own this inside the org
In this episode Frederik Joachim addresses this and
Full transcript
About this transcript
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Transportation actually accounts for nearly a fifth of global CO2 emissions, and this transportation is not only the transportation of goods, but also the transportation of people. Transition now from the actual driving experience to the from a corporate perspective, you also need to change sort of your reporting structure as well, right. So one reason of doing this again, right, is also measuring your carbon footprint.
Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast. My name is Frederik von Dörs. I’m the CEO of Green Innovation Group. We are a management consultancy that work on decarbonizing health care. Today I have a guest in the studio, and this is the second time I had Isabel in the studio. Isabel works with HERE Technologies. It’s a company that works on helping corporates understand where the stuff is and how it gets there.
And in today’s episode, we’re talking about the transition to electrical vehicles. And particularly we’re talking about challenges for a major pharma company to actually make the switch from having a couple of thousand fossil fuel-based vehicles and turning that into an electric vehicle fleet.
Hello and welcome to the show, Isabel. Today we’re going to talk about something that’s kind of splitting the waters, the realm of electric vehicles. And you’re working with HERE Technologies on optimizing a lot of the processes behind moving stuff from one place to another. In our previous episode, we coined it as the where’s my stuff for corporates. And a part of that agenda is the conversion from fossil fuel-based transportation to electrical vehicles. Why is this an important sustainability case to have the transition to electric vehicles?
Yeah, well, one main point that I want to establish at the beginning is that transportation actually accounts for nearly a fifth of global CO2 emissions. And this transportation is not only the transportation of goods, but also the transportation of people. In the last episode, we were more focusing on the supply chain side and delivery of goods and transportation of goods. But now talking about also transportation of people, that’s where then EV, electric vehicles, are a big topic from a private perspective, but also from a business and corporate perspective.
If we’re looking for the pharmaceutical industry, where do we have person transport? What are we transporting around that is not transported in trucks? Usually, pharma companies have outsourced their logistics to logistics providers like DHL UPS. But they nevertheless still have a very big fleet that they operate, which is their own employee car fleet. For example, Novartis has 25,000 vehicles or AstraZeneca has 17,000 vehicles. So we’re not just talking about a few. Pharma specifically has recognized that there is an opportunity to transition to EV and with that contribute to decarbonizing healthcare as well.
So what are all these cars transporting around? Essentially, it’s their sales force, right? People that actually go out into the field present the newest studies to the doctors or hospitals and have the luxury of having a company car. This is a really interesting case because it really sheds light on just how old school this industry actually is, that it’s using live sales people that go door to door to clinics in order to position and sell products. We do not see the same need to be physically present with the client. In healthcare specifically and pharma, it does come down to: do I trust this person? Do I have a relationship with the person?
Just jumping on a Teams call and discussing projects over a video call might work to a certain degree in the industry, but essentially you still have to go there and maybe show the new device and present it and give the doctor or surgeon also the chance to touch it, the look and feel, try it out. So I think this will always be the case that the sales person still has to go actually onsite and meet the surgeon and doctor and also understand their daily struggles and build that relationship essentially. And build the trust as well.
What are the key challenges when you’re trying to transform a fleet, say we’re looking at AstraZeneca 17,000 vehicles? People might think ‘I can’t get that far with my battery, I’m scared to run out of battery halfway, then I can’t find an available charging point.’ From a corporate perspective, to really make that transition of 100% of their fleet should be by 2025 EV, you need to take these challenges that the sales employees are facing seriously and provide services like EV routings that show you not only when you’re on the go where is the nearest charging point, but maybe already one step further in your planning process. So when you plan your trip, this is a longer one, I need to plan some extra time for charging, and you will still be in time for your meeting.
There’s many different also charging adapters, so you need to make sure you go to the one that is fit for your vehicle specifically, because not every charger works with every vehicle. We source many different data sources and then bring it all together and create services out of that show you exactly, for this vehicle type, you should go to this charging station and it’s available or not available.
But then transitioning now from the actual driving experience to from a corporate perspective, you also need to change your reporting structure as well. So one reason of doing this is also measuring your carbon footprint. You want to understand what was the mileage of that employee and understanding on that route he had this CO2 footprint. And then also from a battery and warranty perspective, you need to monitor the battery consumption and how it’s performing. So the fleet manager actually at these companies has suddenly different questions he needs to answer.
There’s so much talk about the power-to-X debates and what are we going to do with renewable electricity and we have too much. Considering that you could potentially set on 17,000 batteries, do you think it’s feasible that you could maybe take renewable electricity from the grid, store it in the batteries that drive around and sell some of that electricity back on the grid? It’s an interesting question. The companies that we are talking to are also saying we want to also understand how we, looking from a broader perspective, can contribute to the EV transition in general. So yes, their own fleet is the starting point but then also how can we contribute to the infrastructure?
There’s a challenge in terms of who are able to sell energy in which amounts and to whom, the fees attached to an energy transaction, and an insurance problem — the wear and tear on a battery will be very different from an insurance perspective if you’re also using it to discharge from the battery back to the grid. Thanks a lot for being with us Isabel and for coming here on the show again. Thanks for listening to this episode with Isabel from HERE Technologies on the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast.