Why Would A Cannabis Dispensary Add EV Charging Out Front?

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The CleanTechnica mailroom is an absolutely fascinating place. As one of the partners at this company, I occasionally have to roll my sleeves up and cover for people in a variety of roles, including answering our inbound email (effectively, CleanTechnica’s mailroom). We get all sorts of interesting stuff. We get a ton of useful suggestions for content, and strategy. We get inbound inquiries from advertisers. We get spam. So much spam. We get FUD (so much FUD) — thinly veiled fossil PR folks trying to convince us that direct air capture is the bees’ knees, that hydrogen is a real climate solution, or back in the day, that there was such a thing as clean coal.

And then, occasionally, we get a really interesting story, which we decide to turn into an article. We got a pitch last week from a cannabis dispensary, announcing it had put in an EV charger in its parking lot. I mean…cool, but…don’t customers come and go in 5-10 minutes? Who spends an hour at a dispensary? Is 5 minutes of charge really that beneficial to a customer? I had so many questions.

As it turns out, as I dove in further, it was a pretty epic little story of industry-leading change.

Here it is, written by one of their employees.

by Ian Elwood

7 Stars Holistic Healing Center receives as many as 30 deliveries from cannabis distributors per week. They drop off cannabis flower, pre-rolls, edibles,  tinctures, and a variety of other cannabis products. Delivery drivers unload and roll hand trucks full of boxed cannabis products into our store daily. But until recently all of the vehicles that delivered to us were running on fossil fuels. As the Director of Marketing for 7 Stars and an environmentalist, I felt that I was in a good position to lead the charge on installing EV chargers to convert some of these delivery vehicles, so I researched the project costs, available incentives, technology and other details, and pitched the idea to the owners. They were cautious of uncharted territory, but after securing corporate sponsorship from four cannabis brands, the owners were on board.

Having support from Native Humboldt, Sol Spirit Farm, KIVA, and WYLD was crucial to the project’s success, and the brands were happy to do something for the greater good and get positive exposure as a result. We also received technical and financial support from MCE Energy, which generates the wind and solar electricity that our dispensary runs on.

One of my goals for the EV charger project is to nudge the cannabis industry toward electrifying its transportation. The delivery from farmer to manufacturer to distributor to dispensary is a part of California’s supply chain that could be zero emissions if EV charging was ubiquitous. One of the most popular edible brands in California, KIVA, already owned a Ford E-Transit Van when we installed the chargers. They deliver to us weekly so I requested that KIVA deliver to 7 Stars using the electric vehicle, and they were happy to oblige.

The next project we would like to explore is how we can use the chargers to power a home delivery service. People drive to the dispensary to shop in-store, or use our curbside pickup service. By delivering the product in an EV instead of having someone pick it up using fossil fuels, we can start chipping away at those emissions. 

The cannabis industry is one that always pays attention to what other players in the industry are doing. We’re challenging other cannabis farmers, manufacturers, distributors, and dispensaries to join us in electrifying the cannabis supply chain. Our industry is made up of people who care about the environment, and we’re all doing what we can. By moving forward collaboratively on the project of fleet electrification, we can make a real difference in the world.

7 Stars is committed to sharing our work, and we welcome anyone in the industry to get in touch with us to learn more about how to install EV chargers. There’s a lot of potential upsides, not the least of which is offering EV charging to customers. EV chargers can attract new customers, and shows that your commitment to the environment is backed by infrastructure investment. We hope the other companies in our industry will follow our lead and begin to electrify their fleets, and we’ll do whatever we can to help.