How ride-hailing company Lyft plans to offset its carbon emissions

The second-largest ride-hailing company in the US wants to offset its carbon emissions through several multi-million dollar projects.
20 April 2018

In 2017, Lyft drivers completed 376 million rides, accounting for over a billion mile. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lyft, the second-largest ride-hailing company in the US, is looking to offset emissions from its cars by investing in projects to reduce other sources of greenhouse gas.

According to Reuters, Lyft said it will buy carbon “offsets” to support projects such as renewable energy and reforestation, balancing the carbon impact of every mile driven by a car working for Lyft, including the miles driven to pick up a passenger.

The company is expected to spend millions of dollars in the first year of the programme and the costs would increase in line with its growth.

“This in a sense puts a tax on ourselves to continue to move toward shared rides and lower emission vehicles,” Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer said recently.

However, the company did not disclose how much they would be spending on the programme.

In 2017, Lyft drivers completed 376 million rides, accounting for over a billion miles.

Lyft founder and president John Zimmer is expected to spend millions of dollars in the first year of the programme and the costs would increase in line with its growth. Source: Wikipedia Commons

The company said it will be working with environmental firm 3Degrees, which sources carbon reduction projects. Lyft also said it will tap its more than US$4 billion in venture capital funding to pay for the carbon offsets.

“We feel immense responsibility for the profound impact that Lyft will have on our planet,”  Zimmer and co-founder Logan Green and wrote in a blog post as quoted by Bloomberg.

“As we continue to grow, we have a greater responsibility to dedicate material resources to our vision and values.”

The project, Zimmer said, was expedited after the US Environmental Protection Agency moved to ease Obama-era vehicle emissions standards this month.

Earlier, Lyft had funded a project reduce greenhouse gas emission from an auto parts factory in Michigan by using alternative materials and recycling transformer oil in Ohio.

“It’s really important that we know what the projects are, that they are real and tangible and that they would not have happened otherwise,” Zimmer said.