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Toward a Carbon-free Lime

By Wayne Ting, CEO of Lime

As world leaders come together for COP26, one of the most important climate talks in a generation, we’ve reached an important milestone in our journey at Lime: our science-based carbon target has now been independently-validated by the most stringent standard for corporate target-setting, the Science Based Targets Initiative, a collaboration of the Carbon Disclosure Project, United Nations Global Compact, WWF, and World Resources Institute.

We are working toward this target--set based on what climate science determines will prevent the worst of climate impacts--and reducing our company’s carbon impact consistent with the Paris Climate Accord.At Lime, we’re on a mission to build a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free, and of course, we know that starts with us.

We are proud to be the first micromobility company to do this important work across the entire company’s emissions, including our supply chain; and given the urgency of the climate crisis we face, we have completed setting and validating this target one year ahead of schedule.

To achieve these carbon goals, we will reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions 50% by 2030. For our Scope 3 emissions, we will ensure that 80% of our supply chain by emissions set their own carbon targets; and for other components of our Scope 3 emissions, such as transportation and distribution, we will reduce the climate intensity per-passenger-kilometer we provide by 82%.

This is the product of extensive internal efforts to first measure our emissions and then chart a path toward net zero without the use of carbon offsets, consistent with what the science demands of us.

Since we used our carbon footprint from 2019 as our baseline in this process, it’s a path we’ve already embarked on. Here’s how we are tackling this challenge:

First, to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions -- emissions from Lime facilities and operations vehicles -- 50% by 2030, we will:

  • Continue to deepen our commitment to charge our global fleet on renewable energy by powering our warehouses on renewables and buying local renewable energy where we can. As the first operator to commit to charging our global fleet on 100% renewables, we’ve already begun this work locally in the UK, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, United States and Korea.
  • Continue to transition our entire operations fleet to electric vehicles and e-assist cargo bikes. We have a fully electric operations fleet in Paris, have new electric vehicles for our London operations, nine new electric vans en route to Germany, and more than two-dozen more vehicles arriving for cities around the globe in Q1 next year. Our deployment of swappable batteries has also enabled Lime to use e-assist cargo bikes more widely.

For our Scope 3 emissions, which account for 90% of our impacts and include everything from the hardware we buy to how our shared vehicles get to the cities we serve, we will reduce the climate intensity per-passenger-kilometer we provide by 82% through serving more trips, longer trips, and more efficiently run trips with fewer underlying transport emissions.

  • We’re doing this through designing custom, modular and more repairable bikes and scooters with swappable and interchangeable parts and batteries which reduce operational impacts.
  • We’re eliminating the most carbon intense shipping methods, particularly air shipments, and we’ve eliminated the non-recyclable waste associated with packaging our vehicles to ship.

And for the rest of our Scope 3 emissions, we will get over 80% of our supply chain (by emissions) to set their own climate targets by 2026.

  • This will require deep supply chain engagement to ensure only the companies that take aggressive action to address this shared global crisis are part of Lime’s future supply chain.
  • We’ll also continue to innovate with more sustainable hardware, design, and material sourcing.

This is one more exciting step on our journey of completely decarbonizing our service, our business, and -- we hope -- transportation entirely.

We will report on our progress toward these three goals each year going forward.

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