Electric Scooters or e-scooters are just ordinary two-wheeled kick scooters with an electric motor. They say that when you use it, you can protect the environment and save your time.
Studies Show That E-Scooters Have Not Led to a Decrease in Carbon Footprint
Studies show that renting e-scooters hasn't actually led to decreased city carbon emissions. It depends on how and where they're running, but there are many situations where e-scooter programs can be environmentally-friendly.
E-scooter emissions must be taken into account throughout their entire lifecycle to evaluate the environmental impact of these programs. This includes the production of the materials and components used in each scooter, the manufacturing process, shipping of the scooters to their intended locations, collecting, charging, and redistributing of the scooters, as well as disposal.
202 grams of CO2 per passenger mile are produced by shared e-scooters over the course of their entire lifecycle, according to a 2019 study carried out in the US state of North Carolina. Only 34% of the e-scooter journeys evaluated substituted a trip that would have been made in a shared automobile, despite the study's finding that e-scooters create fewer carbon emissions than shared cars (415 grams).
These conclusions were strengthened by a 2020 study conducted in Paris, which found that the city's shared e-scooters increased the city's carbon footprint by 13,000 metric tons over a year, comparable to the total yearly emissions of a small town.
According to a study conducted earlier this year by Daniel Reck and Kay Axhausen at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, a shared e-scooter produces 51 more CO2 per kilometer than the mode of transportation replacing on average. According to Reck, shared electric scooters currently harm the environment. This was stated in an interview with the German publication Die Zeit.
There is a Need to Redesign E-Scooters, Experts Say
Even under the best circumstances, early fleets only lasted a few months. The scooters' own transportation requirements come next. They have typically relied on small batteries that require frequent charging; typically, workers are hired to pick up the scooters, drive them outside of town for charging, and then return them the following morning.
Most of a rental program's environmental impact is accounted for by the emissions produced during manufacturing and operations. According to the North Carolina study's researchers, these factors account for 93% of the carbon footprint of a shared e-scooter.
However, this also means that there are clear opportunities for operators to cut the emissions of their rental programs, including by coming up with creative ways to gather and distribute their fleet. Companies are also extending the lifespan of their scooters. Superpedestrian, Lime, and Bird are three operators that have taken things a step further by creating industry-standard models internally. Swappable batteries are being offered by a number of other businesses, including Lime and Bird.
Currently, the majority of e-scooter rental schemes lack clear eco-credentials. Despite recent advancements that users have noted, scooter manufacturers, their present life cycles, and the methods for collecting, charging, and distributing them remain secretive. However, given how quickly the e-scooter rental business has developed, it is challenging to generalize the current study's findings to determine how environmentally friendly these programs will be.
Obviously, the market is expanding quickly and rental e-scooter emissions will decrease with time. Whether we can enhance the transit modes they replace is a larger unknown. E-scooters will struggle to be the greenest mode of transportation in major cities with adequate public transportation, such as Paris, New York, and London.
