Ivo Hummelink-

Two weeks ago an article on the website www.energya.nl was posted about the progress of electrical driving at Texels little brother-island Terschelling. On this second-largest Wadden eiland a project was launched to promote the use of electrical cars and at the same time implement the concept of the Sharing Economy (wikipedia, 2015). The company that initiated the project (GreenFlux) found out a clever way of combining car-sharing opportunities with the roll out an infrastructure for vehicle-charging opportunities all over Terschelling.

 What is so clever about this initiative is that the designers did not only incorporate new technical features in the project, but also had attention paid to the socio-technical implications of this innovative concept.

For instance, the design is tailor-made for the island-locals and therefore designed to be aligned with the current local traffic-needs of the island. For the charging of the vehicles on Terschelling, no extra id-pass is needed, because the characteristics of Terschelling being a (isolated) island, make it that nearly all e-cars on the island are part of the project. The designers stated that  ‘This feature is only applicable on a small island-community, on the main-land it would become a mess’ (Belder , 2015)

A second example of the keen socio-technical eye is this project is that the designers incorporated the value ‘environmentally friendliness’ in their concept: On the charging stations the user can choose his own energy-mix: from completely renewable to a fossil fuel source.

 I find this initiative to be a a sound example of Elkingston 3P approach (Elkington, 1997), combining the interests of the people, the planet and profit in one project and I think Texel could learn a lot of this project regarding the roll-out of their own e-car infrastructure.

Bibliography

Belder . (2015, 09 04). energya.nl. Opgehaald van http://www.energiebusiness.nl/2015/04/09/slimme-laadpalen-voor-elektrische-deelautos-op-terschelling/

Elkington. (1997). Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of Twenty-First Century Business. Oxford: Capstine.

wikipedia. (2015). Opgehaald van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharing_economy