Electrify Your Business: A Guide for Moving Forward With Electric Vehicles

San Francisco, ever-adamant about being at the forefront of the green movement, played host to a green transportation workshop Wednesday aimed at steering Bay Area businesses in that direction.

And because busy business executives love easy-to-follow steps, that's exactly what a team of officials with the city's Department of Environment, PG&E and Business Council on Climate Change introduced.

Free and available online, "Electrify Your Business: A Guide for Moving Forward With Electric Vehicles," runs through what local companies need to do to install electric vehicle charging stations.

On its end, transit-first San Francisco has expanded car sharing, made sure most of its municipal fleet is either hybrid or uses compressed natural gas and will soon launch a pilot project to install battery switch stations for taxis. 

City officials, environmental leaders and business executives who gathered at the Ferry Building encouraged business owners to help advance the "electric vehicle revolution."

"We have of course already made the environmental U-turn but there is a long way to go," said Melanie Nutter, director of the city's Department of the Environment.

Less than 5,000 electric cars currently travel Bay Area roads, said Mike Calise, the guide's lead author and founder of EVadvise, an advising firm for electric cars. 

But with many automobile manufacturers coming out with electric vehicles in the next couple of years, Calise expects the number to reach up to 20,000 in three years and up to 100,000 in five years. 

The three types of alternative fuel vehicles -- electric, natural gas and biodiesel fuel -- each have their advantages and disadvantages, but businesses can expect environmental and economic benefits if they make the right choice based on distance and number of people,said Dan Bowermaster, manager of PG&E's clean air transportation team. 

Businesses looking to adopt green fleets can expect environmental and economic benefits if they make the right choice based on distance and number of people, he said.

Today, plenty of local, state and federal incentives exist to eliminate the price difference between alternative fuel and traditional fuel vehicles, said Karen Schkolnick, district grant programs manager for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

"Now, we're working very hard to make sure there is no 'range anxiety,'" Schkolnick said, referencing reservations to adopt electric vehicles for lack of enough charging stations.

Rolf Schreiber, Google's electric transportation technical program manager, made a business case for other companies to jump on the bandwagon. He said the fleet of plug-in hybrids Google has been using since June 2007 demonstrated a "substantial environmental benefit," consuming 50 percent less fuel than regular hybrids.
"There were a lot of negative perspectives of electric vehicles and we wanted to break that stereotype, change the argument from skepticism of plug-in vehicles to embracing them," Schreiber said. 

Attendees at the workshop, co-sponsored by the Business Council on Climate Change and the Bay Area Council, checked out some of the latest zero-emission electric vehicle models on display. Many embraced the idea of green transportation. 

Sylvia Kwan, founder of Kwan Henmi Architecture/Planning in downtown San Francisco, said she will highly recommend that her clients include plug-in stations.

"The barrier is very low. It's another investment but it can be done," she said. "San Francisco should be the first place to do it, as we have been doing in everything else green."