Environmental footprint of shared e-scooters

September 2019: Carbon emissions from upstream and downstream processes of electric scooters have similar overall emissions to travelling by bus, bicycle, or moped. These emissions could be mitigated if operators would use more efficient vehicles when collecting and re-distributing scooters, reduce the overall frequency of collection, and reduce the environmental impact during manufacturing.

Information

Shared e-scooters are becoming increasingly prevalent  in urban areas. Despite e-scooter companies marketing themselves as offering ‘environmentally friendly’ urban transport, new evidence suggests that they have a similar carbon footprint to buses, mopeds, bicycle sharing, and other shared ride services. Electric scooters show particularly higher impact due to embedded energy use in production materials, the manufacturing process, shipping from their production site to the city of use, and the collection, recharging, and redistribution of the scooters. Additionally, 49% of the participants indicated that instead of using an e-scooter they normally would have walked or cycled, only 34% would have used a car, 11% would have taken a bus, and 7% would not have taken the trip at all; thus, suggesting that e-scooters might be incentivising more users to use the service instead of zero carbon transport methods such as walking. This ‘rebound effect’ has been noted with other forms of product sharing.  

Implication & Opportunity

Increasing use of e-scooters could become more environmentally friendly if charging the scooters would be linked to renewable energy sources, manufacturing processes would transition towards circular models, companies would revise the practice of using mostly fossil-fuel powered vehicles to collect and redistribute the scooters. In addition, companies could only collect scooters that have fallen below a certain battery threshold or allow for users to take temporary ownership of particular scooters, thereby reducing the need for regular collection. Simultaneously, e-scooter companies could re-structure manufacturing processes to allow for higher remanufacturing rates, which would avoid damaged or vandalised scooters being discarded.

Limitations

Calculating the full environmental impact of any transport mode is highly complex, leading studies to be highly sensitive to limitations in data availability and accuracy. This study focuses on e-scooter use in the US and the impact of up-and downstream processes, requiring further elaboration in other contexts.

Sources

Hollingsworth, J., Copeland, B., & Johnson, J. X. (2019). Are e-scooters polluters? The environmental impacts of shared dockless electric scooters. Environmental Research Letters, 14(8), 084031. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab2da8 

The Guardian. (2019). Electric scooters aren't as eco-friendly as they seem, study finds. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/02/electric-scooter-eco-friendly-greenhouse-gases