“We believe the future of transportation will be shared, electric, and carbon-free. As part of that mission, we’re committed to taking an aggressive path toward becoming a net zero business. We felt it appropriate for Paris, a global leader in micromobility and sustainability, to be home to the first shared-scooters certified as carbon neutral through a globally-recognized Protocol.”
Andrew Savage, VP of Sustainability, Lime
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Lime looked at the emissions from its e-scooters in Paris, including the manufacture, distribution, maintenance, charging, and their end-of-life.
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Lime worked with third-party carbon footprinting expert Anthesis to conduct a life-cycle assessment of the environmental footprint of the e-scooters. The manufacture of the scooter parts and the transport needed to charge the scooters were found to make up the biggest part of the greenhouse gas footprint.
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Lime has a target to become carbon negative by 2025. It has committed to set a Science-Based Target and to be net zero in line with the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi) and the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C by 2030.
Lime has served Parisians e-scooters since 2018, providing more than 25 million rides as a clean, safe and affordable alternative to cars. In 2020, the company decided to go the extra mile and make every kilometre travelled CarbonNeutral. Scooters are part of an ambitious environmental platform, the “15 Minute City” of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, where all journeys can be taken in 15 minutes.
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To certify the e-scooters as CarbonNeutral products, Lime is reducing its emissions: renewable electricity was purchased for all the e-scooter charging and for its warehouses from French-provider Planete Qui, electric vehicles have been introduced to manage the fleet, and its extensive repair and reuse programme working with local labour, helps keep scooters and their parts operating on the streets longer and enables recycling 97% of materials used in e-scooters at their end-of-life.
For the remaining emissions, Lime uses carbon offsets, validated and verified to independent quality standards, from improved cookstove, solar and wind projects in Bangladesh, Rwanda and Turkey.
The improved cookstoves project in Bangladesh increases fuel efficiency and reduces indoor air pollution in households that previously relied on burning biomass in traditional stoves.
The solar project in Rwanda helps finance the largest grid-connected solar park in East Africa delivering 15,000 MWh of clean electricity to the Rwandan grid.
The wind power project in Turkey helps to deliver essential renewable energy capacity in a country with rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions.
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Sustainability is very much at the heart of the company’s mission, given it exists to provide reliable, affordable and safe forms of electric transport to replace cars, which contribute up to a third of the carbon emissions in the cities it serves.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo ran a tendering process to decide which scooter companies could operate in the city in 2020 as part of the “15 Minute City” programme. Lime was among the three winners of the tender process, in part supported by its CarbonNeutral action.
A full overview of Lime’s sustainability initiatives and recent carbon commitments is here.