Electric Organic Grocery Delivery

In December just before the end-of-year break Jesse Hull, Fair Food’s Logistics Manager, rang Jim at Essendon Ford and put a deposit on two new electric vans.

The E-Transits, the first large electric vans to come to Melbourne, are due this August.

Since Fair Food was launched we’ve been wanting to go down the electric delivery avenue.

An ill-fated conversion of a Sprinter van in 2010 was sadly shelved after the converted vehicle achieved a disappointing top speed of 15kmh.

Our electric van urgency only grew when we moved warehouses and installed a 250 panel solar array that generated twice as much power as we were using.  

But now with commercial electric vans available Fair Food is looking to transition our entire delivery fleet over the next three years and help CERES fulfil its mission to become carbon neutral by 2025.

Transitioning our fleet can’t be done without financial backing – cue CORENA, Australia’s first revolving renewable energy fund.

CORENA, aka Citizens Own Renewable Energy Network Australia, revolving fund works by providing interest-free loans to not-for-profit organisations to invest in things like solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. 

The energy savings generated from the projects help the organisations fund their loan repayments which flow back into the revolving fund which then go out again to finance new projects and around and around it goes. 

Founder Margaret Hender came up with the idea for CORENA in 2010 as she related a study to a friend showing it would cost households just eight dollars a week to transition Australia to 100% renewable energy over 10 years.

“When her friend said she’d happily pay the eight dollars a week it got Margaret thinking of a way to harness people’s enthusiasm for change and turn it into renewable energy projects.

The result, CORENA, is run by the kind of people you’d hope were managing the transition of our country to a zero emission electric economy.

This group of climate scientists, chemists, engineers has now raised and loaned $800,000 to finance forty-four renewable energy projects in child care centres, specialist schools, housing associations and community resource centres.

Key positions at CORENA are held by women who offer technical support and advice to their not-for-profit customers which are more-often-than-not managed by women.

This week Jesse and I were blown away by the level of technical support CORENA provided as Margaret and colleague, Ekkehard, took a slew of solar generation reports and van delivery schedules and worked out the type of chargers that would work best with our new vans.

If you’d like to know more about CORENA’s revolving renewal energy fund or want to get involved you can find them here. 

For now we wait for our vans to arrive and the beginning of the new era of electric organic grocery delivery.

Thinking of friends in Queensland

Been thinking of farmers up in Queensland who have been flooded out as well as our friends at Food Connect in Brisbane who are delaying their deliveries this week hoping some of their growers can get their crops through floodwaters and into town. 

This is an exerpt from Food Connect’s Sunday newsletter…

…On Friday we mentioned that a number of our growers were likely to be impacted over the coming days, but the reality has been worse than anticipated.  A number of our farmers and friends like Tammy and Dave at Black Crow Organics, Phil and Alice at Loop (twice), Caron and Carl at Tin Shed Farm, Mandy and Adrian at Luvaberry, the team at Millen Farm and more have had their farms inundated or impacted by flood, and more still are currently cut off from delivering to us, with several rivers yet to peak.

The pic above is from Neighbourhood Farm in Brisbane – farmers Matt and Micah had just finished planting out both greenhouses and had their tomato seedlings ready for public workshops next week.

Have a safe week,

Chris