Skip Descant* says a new study by researchers at North Carolina State University concluded that e-scooters are greener than cars, but still have room to improve.
For all of the sustainability ethos surrounding rentable electric scooters, it turns out they may only be greener than a personal automobile.
A new study by researchers at North Carolina State University found the carbon footprint of an e-scooter, over the course of its often short life, is greater than many advocates may be comfortable with.
Because the scooters need to be gathered, recharged and redistributed — usually thanks to some form of fossil-fuel powered vehicle — their green bonafides are greatly reduced.
The research also found that many scooters only have a 12-month to 24-month life cycle, further eating into environmental benefits once their materials and production are considered.
One of the lead authors of the report, Jeremiah Johnson said the aim was to try and understand the full picture.
“These included some of the hidden things, the things that may be a little less obvious,” Johnson said.
Researchers also took into consideration the carbon footprint of shipping the scooters to the United States from China, where they are generally produced, as well as the electricity used to recharge them.
Both of these factors turned out to be negligible when studying the devices’ overall environmental impact.
“In our study, the materials and manufacturing were about half of the greenhouse gas burden,” Johnson said.
“The collection and redistribution process was more than 40 per cent.”
In only two years, thousands of rent-to-ride electric scooters have appeared in dozens of American cities.
They provided some 38.5 million rides in 2018, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).
The scooters have stoked both the ire and glee of city and transportation officials who have struggled with haphazardly placed, or vandalised, devices.
By the same token, public policy-makers have praised scooters’ ability to replace car trips, cutting down on emissions and congestion.
“In our survey we found that about one-third of the [scooter] rides were displacing car rides,” Johnson said.
“However, some 49 per cent of respondents said they would have biked or walked, were the scooter not available, while 11 per cent said they would have taken a public bus.”
Johnson said if you are substituting car rides, it looks great, but the challenge comes up in that half the time you’re substituting walking or biking.
“Both walking and biking are rated substantially greener than a ride on a scooter,” he said.
Perhaps one of the most comprehensive examinations of local scooter use was the 2018 E-Scooter Findings Report by the Portland Bureau of Transportation.
That study found 34 per cent of Portland residents used scooters to replace a car trip. And 48 per cent of visitors did the same.
“We believe there is a preliminary indication that e-scooters are a less-polluting travel option,” the Portland report concludes.
“However, we need more data — especially regarding e-scooter operations and lifecycle costs — before we can definitively say how much or even whether e-scooters directly contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gases.”
Meanwhile, scooter companies have planned to introduce next-generation devices with swappable batteries that can be changed on-the-fly.
This eliminates the need for devices to be loaded into a vehicle and driven to a recharging location.
Johnson said cities should explore steps to reduce driving among contractors to collect and redistribute the scooters.
His research in Raleigh showed that roughly one out of six scooters were either fully charged or near fully charged at the end of the day.
“They were still picked up, because they had to be removed from the city streets,” he says.
“There’s unnecessary driving to pick up a fully charged scooter, to bring it to a charging station, which it doesn’t need and then redistribute it the next day.
“I recognise that there are other complications with leaving the scooters on the streets overnight, but if a solution could be found that would allow that, that would reduce some of that driving.”
*Skip Descant writes about smart cities, the Internet of Things, transportation and other areas for a number of daily newspapers in the United States. He tweets @TDSskip.
This article first appeared at GovTech.com.
