Ride-hailing vendor Lyft has committed to becoming fully carbon neutral by offsetting the emissions used from vehicles by using 100 percent renewable energy.
Earlier this year, Lyft created a new business unit in order to help it tackle climate change called the Green Cities Initiative. The first step of this program was a multi-million dollar investment in 2018 to offset over a million metric tons of carbon to ensure all Lyft rides are carbon neutral. Lyft said it made the company one of the top 10 voluntary purchasers of carbon offsets worldwide.
Now, Lyft said it plans to purchase enough carbon offsets to neutralize the remainder of its emissions to become fully carbon neutral. The company will also purchase enough renewable energy to cover the electricity consumption of every Lyft office space, driver hub and electric vehicle mile on its platform.
The company will buy clean energy directly from local utilities where it can, the first of which is in San Francisco where it will buy power through the CleanPowerSF program.
Where it can’t buy clean energy directly, Lyft said it will purchase renewable energy credits that will be used to meet environmental standards to ensure electric vehicle drivers’ net electricity usage is 100 percent renewable moving forward. The credits come from renewable energy projects generating clean power on the same regional electricity grids that power Lyft’s offices and driver hubs. These include wind farms in Maine and Colorado, a woody biomass facility in Georgia and a dairy digester in Michigan.
