Dockless vehicles operated by mobility company Lime in Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County, Maryland are due to get a little greener.
The independent contractors who recharge scooters for Lime will now be incentivised to use use clean energy when recharging their batteries.
The US capital city and Maryland were chosen as Lime’s first test markets for the charger promotion due to both cities’ ambitious energy goals.
Yet, at 200 grams of CO2 per mile traveled, scooters have a carbon footprint less than half the size of cars, and their function in supplanting automobile trips boosts their climate credentials.
According to researchers, “materials and manufacturing burdens of the e-scooters and the impacts associated with transporting the scooters to overnight charging stations” make up 93% of the vehicles’ environmental impact.
Inspire CEO Patrick Maloney said: “Some 40% of carbon emissions are coming from the electricity sector. If you want to address the climate issue, you have to address the source.”
To help people make the switch, Lime is collaborating with Inspire, a company that provides Netflix-like subscriptions of renewable energy streams to renters and homeowners.
Inspire will offer each Lime charger a US$160 (£124) clean energy credit when they sign up, which will be taken off from their electric bill. On average, the deducted amount should cover one or two months of power.
The capital’s utility providers will be pushed to generate 100% renewable energy by 2032; Maryland said it will convert 50% of its energy into renewables by 2030. Lime might scale up the initiative, depending on the success.
It could be said that this partnership looks like a company’s bid to outsource a small bit of its environmental reckoning to gig workers, without addressing larger-in-house issues of manufacturing materials, for example.
Andrew Savage, Lime’s head of sustainability, added: “It’s not going to [just] be about charging scooters – though that’s part of it. If we can be a gateway for more renewables being used in the community, that’s the role we want to play.
