PART 1 : The Strategic Partnership Between Star Charge and ZeroMission

Powering a Sustainable Future — The Strategic Partnership Between Star Charge and ZeroMission

In this episode of Powering a Sustainable Future, host Eduardo Espinal, Head of Sales and Partnerships at ZeroMission, is in conversation with Jonathan Schofield, Sales Director at Star Charge, to explore our groundbreaking collaboration reshaping the EV charging ecosystem.

Together, they discuss how this strategic partnership is designed to empower fleet electrification through cutting-edge hardware and intelligent data services. With over 2 million chargers deployed globally, Star Charge brings deep infrastructure expertise. ZeroMission adds critical layers of insight through digital twin technology—unlocking smarter planning, future-proofing investments, and enhancing ESG reporting for asset managers.

Hear how this partnership aims to deliver real environmental impact, from carbon reduction to improved local air quality, especially in vulnerable communities like schools. Whether you're a fleet operator, policy maker, or sustainability advocate, this episode offers a forward-looking conversation on building an electrified, emission-free future.

🔗 Check out the full video now on our YouTube channel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24mSYDLn5Po

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Transcript

Welcome everyone to Powering Sustainable Future: The Star Charge and Zero Emission Partnership. I'm your host, Eduardo Espinal, head of sales and partnerships at Zero Emission. Today, we're incredibly excited to dive into a partnership that truly embodies the spirit of innovation and sustainability in the rapidly evolving electric vehicle charging landscape. I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined by Jonathan Schofield, the sale director of Star Charge.

Jonathan, thank you for being here. Eduardo, thanks for inviting me. Uh, I too am very excited about this partnership. Uh, you know, the... As you indicated, the, the market is rapidly evolving and I would say one of the, uh, segments of that market that's gonna see some of the most rapid growth and changes is gonna be fleet. Um, Eduardo, you and I have talked a little bit about fleet being a pretty broad term, and it touches a lot of different spaces within the f- uh, electrification.

And so it's exciting to, uh, talk a little bit about how your products, your solutions can fit with our solutions and we create an ecosystem that really enables fleet managers to feel confident about electrifying their fleet. Awesome. Yeah, I absolutely agree with tot- everything that you, you mentioned there. You know, one of the things that I saw immediately after we spoke is the, uh, how well-established Star Charge, over two million EV chargers deployed globally, and with our focus of integrating data services for Zero Emission transport systems.

You know, tell me from the Star Charge perspective what specific aspects of the Zero Mission- mission values particularly resonated with you, and were there key drivers informing this, this key, uh, partnership? The EV charging industry has been around for over a decade, but it was very nascent for a while. And in the last, um, y- five years, we've s- seen it grow quite rapidly. And any time you have rapid scaling like that, you're gonna experience, uh, growing pains.

And a number of the pains that have been experienced have both been on the, uh, the customer user end as well as those who own and operate chargers. And being a manufacturer of EV charging equip-ment, we're very familiar with some of the challenges that arise from having, uh, a- an asset base that's spread out geographically. Some of them may be near cities, but oftentimes they're on, um, stretches of highway that aren't easy to get to.

And because of some of the frustrations that both drivers have had, as well as those managers, uh, of the- those assets, anything that we can do to help facilitate a greater understanding of that asset, how to leverage that a- asset, and I think one of the places where Zero Emission does this really well is how do you understand utilization and how do you plan for future growth? Infrastructure projects are expensive.

Um, the industry has had the term future-proof for a long time, or future-proofing, and it's a complicated term to try and execute on because you need to look at your capital expenditures, uh, against what you can get for an ROI. And maybe it makes sense to add some additional power capacity now because you don't have to go through a utility permitting process in the future. That site might, might not be great.

And so with Zero Emission, uh, really the granular data that you guys are able to provide, uh, to asset managers, it's really gonna enable people to make more educated decisions about where they spend their money, and that is one of the reasons that I'm excited about this. Because when asset managers are better informed and they make better decisions, they're gonna be happier. And then it allows us to support them as they go out there and build up their infrastructure.

Yeah. It's- it's so true. And I really see the shared commitment on both sides to, uh, the zero emission future. Um, really that's, to me, that's th- at- at the heart of this partnership. Um, and building on that, how do you envision this collaboration specifically enhancing Star Charge sustainability initiatives or environmental goals? So, we have an ESG program, an environmental special, uh, governance program, and there are components of that environmental side that we're aimed at achieving.

Oftentimes those are more of an internal thing. How do we perform internally? How do we improve efficiencies in our manufacturing process or our, um, supply chain operations processes? With the data that you guys are a- uh, that the Zero Emission is able to capture, it starts to change that dialogue where we could look and say, "Okay, how, how have we helped our customer base meet their goals?" And that's one of the places that's exciting because as a, uh, a sales director and how I'm helping both our sales managers as well as our channel partners go out and communicate the value of Star Charge, if we can educate them how these...

The, the process of electrification can improve their reporting, their verification, and how they perform for their ESG goals, it creates an opportunity for the whole community at large to start demonstrating this is, um... These are real benefits that we're experiencing. Um, and there's, and there's two phases to that, right? There's the, the carbon emissions which, um, have to think of from the perspe- perspective of part of the emissions that come from a vehicle are easier to understand whereas with an electric vehicle you do have to look at what the source is that's providing that energy.

And then there's the other component which are the, uh, localized tailpipe emissions. And I think as an industry we're, we're getting better at understanding the, the global emissions from, um, carbon and then, you know, looking at that saying, "Well, if these vehicles are being charged from a renewable resource, it's better than having, um, uh, compressed natural gas or, or coal." Local tailpipe emissions, which is something that actually has much more, um, salient benefits immediately.

When you find yourself in a situation... And school, school buses are a very good example of this. Children are s- are sitting there waiting on school buses, and if school buses are sitting in a contained area without a lot of ventilation, the air quality there is going to be, uh, depleted. Whereas with electric school buses you will see that immediately. Now, in terms of measuring and verifying that, that's a little bit more difficult.

You really need to have sensors around in a localized area. I think over time we're gonna see that, um, take place, and then we'll be able to, uh, to, to the market say, "Look, we're- we're benefiting on the global carbon emission reductions, but we're also improving localized air quality." Um, and ideally we'll be able to then sort of value that in some way, like there's a reduction in emergency room visits for asthma attacks, and that's something that could be measured and, and, you know, provides a significant value.