Blog: how to get to work sustainably?
by Andy Russell
We had a staff meeting earlier this week and, for one reason or another, we started discussing how to get to work.
Someone mentioned that they were thinking about cycling but it might be too far to do regularly. Then the discussion turned to e-bikes...
I'd read an article in The Guardian recently about e-bikes, which also has a little video, and they look quite cool! They are basically a bike with a little electric motor on them. It sounds like you can get somewhere between 20-50 miles out of a full change depending on the bike and the route.
But how do they stack up from a sustainability point of view?
A recent study from MIT looking at Life Cycle Assessments of commuter options suggests that they are around 18 times more energy efficient than an SUV and about equal to a conventional bike, which I don't quite understand (I guess I'll have to read the detail!)
There's also the resources used in, and the safe disposal of, the battery to consider but this would be much smaller than the battery in an electric car so less of a concern in that respect.
Thinking about emissions, I guess it all comes down to how you generate the energy to charge the battery. With a small battery, it could quite easily use solar panels to charge so, as long the bike was used regularly to make it an efficient use of resources, then it looks like a good option.
And this is the key to sustainable development: taking a complete view of the system that you're looking at. For example, whilst you'd generally assume cycling was always a good commuting option, Mike Berners-Lee points out in "How bad are bananas?" that if you get all your cycling energy by eating air-freighted asparagus then, with emissions in mind, you'd may as well have jumped in the 4x4! (Of course, this is again a rather limited view as we should also take into account the impacts on health, the local environment/society and the economy from the different transport options.)
So, just to summarise, I don't really know if e-bikes are a good option. Has anyone else seen any other research on this (or read the MIT study properly ;) )?
Join the conversation
Submitted by: Sibylle Ermler
27 Nov 2012 1:20pm
There's a study from the German section of the International Solar Energy society that concludes that E-bikes have lower carbon emissions than muscle powered bikes (which is also good for their trade...). They compare the carbon emissions from a mixed or vegetarian diet to the emissions produced by charging your e-bike from different more or less sustainable energy sources. But then, carbon emissions are only part of the story. But I think if they get more people on bikes who otherwise wouldn't cycle, they are a good option.
Submitted by: Andy Russell
27 Nov 2012 1:33pm
Ah yes, excellent final point. The person in question would be going from a car to an e-bike, where the benefit is obvious. In my own case, I usually bike or bus into work so the benefits here would be less obvious.
Submitted by: Simon Batterbury
17 Dec 2012 10:25am
I'm a former lecturer at Brunel in Geography and Earth Sciences (Department was axed by S Schwartz). I always cycled to Uxbridge from Southall and was amazed at how many staff drove and the size of the car park. We did have an environmental group back in the 90s and I am sure more is done now on campus. I also spent much of my spare time running a branch of the London Cycling Campaign in Ealing. E bikes were not good back then, but now the lithium batteries and better motors make them an interesting proposition. In the UK, the best source on the environmental issues is A to B magazine (just google it), run by enthusiasts who ride and also understand the bigger energy picture. Basically an ebike has a good energy profile only when recharged from renewable energy - you are right. Otherwise carbon emissions from the energy source (if coal fired, for example) tend to outweigh a conventional bike and and even scooters, etc. Lithium batteries have, I think, a worse toxicity problem than lead acid, which is another factor. Lastly, ebike production is not reliable - the best models are now out of production and luxury ones from Holland and Germany are priced high and sometimes go the same way. Cheap models tend to expire quickly. A to B has a great guide to them all online. It is possible to build your own, which Brunel could do!
Jump back to the submission form