Around the world: electric bikes, hydrogen-powered planes and the potential of climate neutral rail freight to transport us towards a cleaner future
This new year, we’re looking at cleaner ways to travel. From commuting in the city with HumanForest’s accessible, zero-emission bike sharing initiative, to Denmark’s plans for hydrogen-powered electric planes and European rail freight achieving climate neutrality—here’s a few modes of transport that hold the potential to cut CO2 emissions and pave the way towards a greener future.
HumanForest’s affordable, zero-emission initiative
Did you know that for each mile ridden on a HumanForest e-bike, 112g of CO2 are saved from ever being emitted into the atmosphere? With an average ride of 2.2 miles, they’ve calculated that across 750 bikes, using e-bikes could save up to 40 tonnes of CO2 per month! To incentivize users to switch to cycling, HumanForest offers 10 minutes of free riding to everyone, every day. This no-strings-attached, electricity-powered initiative helps riders go further, faster—making these e-bikes a no-brainer to get around a busy, traffic-heavy city like London. Plus, not only are HumanForest’s e-bike batteries charged with certified renewable energy, their entire operation is zero emission too, with fully electric vehicles to service the bikes. Sign us up.
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It’s time for air travel to clean up their act
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), aviation contributes around 2.5% of global CO2 emissions (both passenger and freight) and emitted 1.04 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2018. So, places like Denmark have been investigating a better solution—hydrogen. Similar to electric vehicles, you can put hydrogen into a fuel cell to create electricity and use that to power an electric propulsion system. The best part? The only emission its vehicle produces is water vapour—meaning this approach can create a 95% reduction in climate impact for the aviation industry.
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Railway to the future
Transport accounts for 24% of global CO2 emissions, with a majority (74.5%) of these emissions from road vehicles like cars, buses and motorcycles. Instead, rail consumes 6x less green energy and emits up to 9x less CO2 emissions than road transport, with experts predicting rail freight (goods transported in bulk) could achieve climate neutrality without the need for additional infrastructure. Plus, rail freight is much more space efficient, with a single train replacing 50 truckloads of traffic—meaning switching from road to rail freight could be the way forward to cut Europe’s emissions.
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