Proudly sponsored by: Hyundai Motors Australia
AfMA is pleased to recognise Meridian Energy as our Fleet Environment Award Winner for 2018/19. The honour was proudly accepted by the organisation’s Procurement & Property Manager Nick Robilliard during last month’s Fleet Awards in Melbourne.
Meridian is a 100% renewable energy company, who has long been committed to sustainability, and delivering on that promise was a key factor in its journey to date.
“As part of us walking the talk when it comes to protecting the environment, we are committed to converting our fleet to electric,” Nick said.
“However, it is important for us as a leading NZ business to be able to show that the business case and financials in deciding to convert to electric stacked up.”
Central to the change is by installing an Environmental Policy for the organisation, transitioning traditional ICE vehicles to EVs and making use of mobility solutions to reduce kilometres travelled and thus overall CO2 emissions.
“The management of Meridian’s fleet is done so with a 100% focus on our company purpose – clean energy for a fairer and healthier world; and sustainability which is one of our 4 key values,” he said.
“Our current target is zero carbon by 2025, and we are already carbon neutral for our Scope 1 & 2 emissions. Our biggest contribution is 100% renewable energy generation and we are already lower than the science-based target for our sector.”
For every purchase and decision, Meridian Energy considers the following 5 factors:
- the environment and our communities,
- the supply chain of the goods/services,
- the emissions created (and measured),
- the intent to substitute an owned EV with an electric car share service and
- where there is a business need, to always replace an ICE vehicle with a 100% battery electric vehicle.
“Through our own transition we have reduced our emissions and environmental impact, reduced our overall fleet operating costs and reduced driver fatigue and risk of injury within our business,” Nick said.
Meridian Energy’s Journey
Key Achievements
- Challenging and re-inventing the core fundamentals of fleet acquisition, management and disposal,
- Constantly updating and refining the communications content for users of our EV fleet with respect to journey planning and ‘how to use’ the vehicles in our fleet.
- Taking a long term Mobility as a Service strategy which will fundamentally see us continue to reduce the size of our EV fleet and transition to a shared EV fleet.
- Currently developing a mobility journey planner that brings EV fleet, EV car share, EV rental car, Uber and related travel services booked by a travel management company into a single journey planner tool.
- Pioneering the acquisition and special fitout of Electric commercial vehicles for the primary use in a maintenance / off road capacity at our generation asset sites in Manapouri and the Waitaki regions of New Zealand. Examples include LDV eV80 and Nissan eNV200.
- Testing a wide range of EV product available through other overseas markets (that is not available in NZ) thereby driving market capability to source, import and certify to meet NZ certifying standards and infrastructure.
Before & After Statistics
| Pre-Implementation | Post-Implementation | |
| Passenger Vehicles | 50 | 33 |
| Light Commercials | 55 | 55 |
| Petrol vehicle kilometres travelled per year | 33,864 | 7,771 |
| Electric vehicle kilometres travelled per year | 7,944 | 69,289 |
| CO2 emissions: Petrol Consumption | 34.7 | 15.3 |
| CO2 emissions: EV Consumption | 0.17693 | 1.17 |
The Final Word
Meridian believes it has set NZ’s most ambitious goal to achieve 90% electrification using 100% BEV’s by 2020. It is currently in the process of delivering this with a financially sustainable (cost neutral) model that has a fully measured emissions reduction (externally audited). Congrats to Nick and the entire team!
AfMA would like to acknowledge its official sponsors of the 2018/19 Fleet Environment Award, Hyundai Motors Australia
