Andrew Savage - Vice President of Sustainability at Lime

Speaker A: Today's guest is Andrew Savage. Andrew is the VP of Sustainability and founding team at Lime. Andrew is an experienced leader at the intersection of business, government, and sustainability. He was part of the founding team at Lime and now leading global sustainability at the company. Prior, Andrew served as executive director in the solar industry and, um, on the board of directors to the Solar Energy Industry Association. He previously worked in leadership roles in the US Congress and on successful presidential, state, and local political campaigns. Campaigns. Um, welcome to the Sustainable Nation Podcast. Our podcast brings you interviews with global leaders in sustainable and regenerative development. Our goal is to provide sustainability professionals, business leaders, academics, and anyone who's interested in joining the sustainability revolution with information and insights from the world's most inspiring change makers. I'm your host, founder and CEO of Sustridge Sustainability Consulting.

Speaker B: Josh Prigge. Andrew Savage. Welcome to Sustainable Nation. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker C: Thanks so much for having me, Josh. Appreciate it.

Speaker B: Great to have you on. I gave our listeners a little background on your professional life, but tell us a little bit about your personal life and what led you to be doing the work you're doing today.

Speaker C: Yeah, sure. Uh, well, I, um, I grew up in a rural part of Vermont. Um, I still live here in Vermont after some traveling to D.C. and Bay Area when we started Lyme, et cetera. But part of that upbringing really connected me both deeply to both the land and environment. Growing up in a pretty rural area, we did a lot of things like harvesting our own wood to heat our house, and my mom spent a ton of time in the garden growing vegetables for us and to eat most of the year. And also it instilled a real deep sense of community, being in a place where people relied on each other and knew each other well. And, um, I think those two things really have been instrumental in part of the sustainability work that I've done, from working initially in government, um, and more recently in the solar industry and now in electric mobility. You know, I think there's just underpinning, uh, for me, of how can we both, um, help protect the environment, but also create more livable and thriving communities?

Speaker B: Wonderful. And for folks who might not be familiar with Lime, can you just give us a, uh, overview of the company, uh, what you folks do, the size and scale and those types of things, and then feel free to jump into the evolution of sustainability at Lime, how sustainability became an important focus. Focus at your company?

Speaker C: Sure, yeah. Well, we're the world's leading micro mobility shared micro mobility provider, offering e scooters and e bikes in over, uh, 280 markets around the globe. We started the company eight years ago, um, and initially we're just offering pedal bikes. But as E Mobility evolved we very quickly realized that both the uh, electric assist as well as the e scooter form factor were both uh, wildly popular and would help with market expansion and be able to um, you know, expand the uh, number of people that were willing and interested in taking bikes and scooters around cities. You know, we really started the company to help solve the first and last mile transportation challenge that we saw in cities of people getting to and from for example a bus stop or being able to get to a uh, meeting within a city, but it being just a little too far to walk. And really leveraging both the ubiquity of the availability of people having iPhones and smartphones to be able to um, access and pay for a service, um, as well as the availability of better batteries to be able to power these small electric motors. Uh, those two things really made uh, the innovation possible. And as of today we now are providing uh, over seven rides every second. From a scale perspective, uh, we've delivered more than a billion kilometers in trips around the globe and around one in every five trips that are taken are preventing a ah, very highly polluting car trip like ride, uh, hill trip, taxi or personal car trip. And so really that is the underpinning of the sustainability impact and mission that we're on is to help solve these urban mobility challenges, help decrease, decarbonize the uh, way people get around cities and um, reduce carbon emissions overall. And I guess to your second question around the sustainability evolution, you know, very early on I would say that sustainability and this decarbonization mission was part of the fabric of the company, but was a bit dormant. I mean when you're starting an uh, early stage startup in a very highly competitive environment, as it was eight years ago, um, it's really hard to be as focused on some of the fundamentals of sustainability as you might want to be. And certainly we can dive into some of, you know, some of that, uh, in time, Josh. But um, it was something that was there, but we just, we really focused on survival. We were focused on the next need to fundraise, we were focused on the next market expansion. And so around two years into the company, once we'd reached that level of stability, um, I really realized that sustainability was going to be an important part factor for our continued growth. Um, in part our city partners were really requiring it. The city of Paris for example, had uh, an RFP where Uh, one third of all the points scored uh, in the RFP were going to be based on sustainability. So from a business perspective we absolutely need to lean into that. But then it's also really been important to our riders. Our riders want to see that we are uh, living by our mission and doing the best we can to decarbonize our own business as we're looking to decarbonize city mobility as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. So clearly carbon, greenhouse gas emissions, probably the key sustainability issue of focus, where you really have the biggest impact. Um, just wondering, is there a larger sustainability program or efforts addressing other social environmental issues? Or would you say strictly the key focus is carbon?

Speaker C: Well, you're exactly right. I would say carbon definitely leads our sustainability efforts. But we are um, acutely aware of and working on issues across the environment, social and governance spaces. Um, and you know, in particular how do we have a social impact on cities, for example, by helping um, underserved communities, for example, gain access to transportation. How do we enable people that might be unbanked or might have transportation financial challenges be able to access the service? Things like that are fundamentally important to the company. But we do uh, um, rightfully so spend a lot of time thinking about carbon. It's uh, one of the things that led us to set an incredibly ambitious science based target to be net zero by 2030. Um, a trajectory that we are actually ahead of schedule on which I'm really um, excited to share. We have cut carbon emissions since our 2019 baseline by 59.5% and that's a couple years ahead of schedule. And whenever I say that, I'm also um, acutely aware that the next five years are going to be harder than the last five years for uh, that work. So you know, we have a lot of hard work to do and I'm happy to share some of the stories of the things that we've done to get there. But our carbon emissions intensity is something that we're acutely focused on and we're also, as most all sustainability professionals are on scope, 1 and 2 emissions. But we're looking, uh, of course across all three and are steadfastly focused on meeting that net zero goal that we have.

Speaker B: Yeah, I would love to dive into that. I saw, you know, you mentioned reduced emissions 60%. That was also, you know, at the same time of increasing earnings by, it looks like 500%. Um, and I saw in 2023 you had 32% year over year growth, um, but at the same time a 16% reduction in absolute carbon. So that that's great to hear and um, would love to hear how, how have you achieved that, growing the business while at the same time reducing uh, emissions?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it's a great question and you know, I think there are often cases and we found this where sustainability and financial um, performance can go hand in hand. And you know, first off, we always recognize that we need to be a profitable company to be able to have the long term and enduring sustainable impact, sustainability impact that we hope to have. Right. If we couldn't be profitable and we couldn't exist in the long term as a company, uh, all those impacts go out the window. Right. You just don't even exist as a company able to be able to deliver on what you're hoping to achieve. So achieving financial sustainability has been um, critically important. But yeah, as you mentioned, we were able to grow the business by 32%, cut absolute carbon by 16%. And a ton of that is driven by just running a better business. And I can give a couple examples of that. We made a strategic decision around the time of the pandemic, um, which nearly took out the business, um, from a financial perspective because cities around the globe were shutting down, ah, as I'm sure you recall. Um, but what we decided to do was embrace a swappable battery model where we could develop a hardware bike and scooter where batteries that are fully charged could be swapped for depleted batteries that needed to be recharged. Rather than going and retrieving that bike or scooter from the street, putting it in a van and then bringing it back to a charging depot, for example, I mean that was incredibly time consuming and incredibly in carbon emitting, um, even at the same time as we were electrifying all those operations vans, it just didn't make good business sense as well. And that's one of the, an example of uh, of a um, sustainability initiative that also has had major financial improvements so those vehicles can stay on the street longer, there's fewer operational tasks, fewer labor hours, etc. And we've also focused a ton on vehicle longevity. So in the early days of the company, our bikes and scooters though they were designed for being part of the sharing economy and to be able to live out on the streets, which is a pretty rough environment. Um, it was really hard to keep those vehicles lasting as long as we wanted them to. And we really turned the corner by investing in an in house hardware team, um, designing scooters and bikes to be more modular so pieces that break could be replaced with um, with either spare parts that have been taken off other depreciated vehicles or new parts if necessary. And both of these examples, software, batteries and vehicle life have been great for both sustainability fundamentals and financial fundamentals.

Speaker B: Fantastic. And looks like you're also planning to continue to reduce. The goal is, uh, looks like 97% reduction, is that right?

Speaker C: Yeah, so 97% intensity reduction. So you know, we recognize in setting our science based target goal that we were a young company when we set this goal and we still are relatively a young company, um, that you know, we expect to continue to grow the business and grow ridership, um, and at the same time we want to be cutting carbon. So that intensity goal is really a function of carbon intensity, um, over the kilometers, miles of distance traveled by our riders. So um, we hope to be able to keep that divergence going where we can grow trips and grow market expansion and be able to deliver more of the service and at the same time cut the underlying carbon of the company.

Speaker B: Wonderful. And you know, the goal really I'm sure for you all is to be able to promote your, you know, your business model, your services as the lowest carbon, the least impact on the environment. Obviously when you compare it to something like walking or riding a bike, you know that you wouldn't not be able to compare. But how does you know your e scooter or you guys also have E bikes as well, is that right?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker B: Of course. How do those stack up against, you know, you take in a electric Uber or a subway or rail or uh, a bus. Have you, have you done that analysis to understand how you stack up against these other options for these kind of last mile transportations?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And it's part of why we have been so focused on the fundamentals of our business and our own sustainability practices. Because if we do that right, then it only furthers the spread of the modes that we're shifting away from. So things like powering all of our vehicles on renewable energy, including our facilities, uh, as I mentioned, transitioning our operations vehicles to electric vans, uh, shifting our ah, our freight in from port to hub for example to electric and low carbon sources. All those things help decarbonize the business and as a result decarbonize the impact of those individual trips that you were just referring to. And so yeah, we did a study a number of years ago, uh, with the Fraunhofer Institute, a leading tech, um, innovative sort of research institute in Germany, uh, which is highly regarded across Europe and they did essentially a net impact analysis of Looking at the mode shift across all the different modes that people might decide to take a scooter or bike from. So as you mentioned, people might decide to take a scooter bike instead of walking. They might decide to take a scooter, uh, or bike instead of taking uh, a ride hail trip. And those have a huge delta, right, a big difference between those two things. But what they found was the net impact of the service was overwhelmingly positive. It's because our service has been, is at a place where it's highly sustainable. So if you do have a few, you know, percentage, you know, if you have the percentage of the trips that are folks that might otherwise have walked, you balance that with those very, very highly emitting trips of people that might have taken a taxi or ride hail or personal vehicle, and that's how very positive. And our goal is to keep that divergence growing, right, so that we, um, continue to decarbonize the service and make that benefit all the better. But we're about, I guess I would say about 85% lower carbon than um, a personal car trip. It's even more, um, carbon reducing when it's ride hailing or taxi because they have deadheading, which is, uh, causes about a 60% increase compared to a personal vehicle deadheadings, uh, when the folks are driving around to then meet the passenger. Um, so something we're really aware of is something our cities are really aware of. And it's that mode shift that I mentioned at the outset, that one in five trips across the globe that are replacing those cars and ride hail taxi trips that really drive the carbon savings. And that's just carbon. We're not even talking about local pollution, which is an important one as well, where local particulates, uh, have a very geographically localized impact. And that has a big impact as well, um, on the sustainability story of the service.

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Speaker B: Yeah, kind of makes me think of the, uh, Scope four emissions. I'm wondering if you've heard of Scope four or have given that any thought or have a perspective on that. Lots of discussions on, um, whether this is something that should be adopted by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol or not. In the case of Lime, you could make a case, of course, that your services are eliminating the need for the use of vehicles in short distances. So it could potentially quantify Scope four that way, but then also might be replacing zero emission commuting like biking and walking. I'm wondering if Lime has any perspective or opinions on Scope four emissions and where that's at.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, uh, Scope four emissions, what you're referring to is like avoided emissions by the service. And it's something that, as I mentioned, really aware of and want to continue to improve. And I think we're in a good place on it. But it's not a place where we're looking to, um, count that, for example, against emissions of the business. And so we really want the scope for avoided emissions to be accruing that benefit to the cities that we serve. So if we're in Los Angeles or Washington D.C. or Paris or Rome, like we want those local communities to be seeing and feeling, even if it's uh, a bit virtual, the carbon savings of the service. It's in part why we view the service as so integral to the transportation network within cities that we operate. So we're very happy to have folks taking a bike or scooter to or from public transportation. Um, we think that that helps improve the overall function of the city urban environment. Um, we also at the same time have gotten to a place where our carbon, uh, per passenger mile or passenger kilometer is below many of those public transportation services. But we still see a lot of value in those services. Right? So, you know, we think that avoided emissions are an important conversation. It's not something that we're looking to sort of bank against our own efforts, uh, with. And it's one, we're, you know, we're watching the evolutions with SBTI and others and, and we think It's a healthy conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah. And speaking of the, the cities, does Lime collaborate or how do you collaborate with city governments, local communities to communicate this, to kind of promote sustainable transportation?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I would think, candidly, it's an area we probably could improve. Where we do a lot of communication at the local level is our local teams are constantly sharing with city partners the ridership figures, the carbon savings, the sort of net impact that we previously discussed, uh, with those local leaders based on the trips that they see within those local markets. And in part that's um, to help validate the service, but it's in part also sometimes to earn the trust of cities to expand the service. You know, we're in many markets doing hundreds of thousands and sometimes, you know, millions of trips in a given week. And that has a big impact, um, and also has an impact on whether or not cities think about adding, um, more different modes like bikes, where we might not have bikes, or scooters where we might not have scooters. Uh, we're also piloting some other modes, uh, of electric transport that might complement our existing suite of options. But we also do things like share with cities data, um, anonymous and aggregated, but allow them to have a visual on where are people actually traveling, um, on city streets and what could that data be used for? How could the data be used to help improve transportation infrastructure safety and other factors? I mean there's some great examples of where we can see that at a certain street or um, a certain part of the city, people do sort of an odd zig or a zag and there's a reason for that usually. And if you drill down into it, it's often because they find a safer path or maybe they're moving two blocks over to get to the protected bike lane, or maybe they just want to be going with traffic, for example. So, you know, we've had great examples from Seattle to Paris where we've been able to share real data with cities to be able to help them improve the sustainability of their infrastructure.

Speaker B: Love that. Um, and quickly. Circular economy. Thinking about the, the end stages of the product life cycle, I'm wondering if you've started to look at that or taken any steps to taking, you know, to manage the end of life of e scooters, e bikes in terms of recycling or repurposing or if you've looked at design, um, beginning to like design products, uh, with the circular economy in mind.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, in part, what our local teams across these 280 markets do day in and day out is the underpinning of the circular economy where they're taking in vehicles that may be damaged and need repair and finding the most cost effective and very often the most sustainable way to do that. And that is at the heart of what a more circular economy looks like. So the team is repairing vehicles, uh, as I mentioned, more modular vehicles than ever before, um, sometimes with spare parts that have been taken off vehicles that can no longer be repaired. Our goal is to keep vehicles on the street safely, um, longer and we also want to be cognizant of the, the carbon implications of the parts that are being used. And so you know, what our teams are doing is they're constantly looking at vehicles, assessing them for safety and getting them back on the street, um, with the proper repairs. And I think that right there is one of the things that has been the fundamental improvements m to um, our financial and sustainability journey. We also are doing some really innovative things around the second life. For example of batteries. We found that with finding um, second life battery partners where they take the batteries that may not be usable for moving a person around the city anymore, but might have cells within that battery that are perfectly capable of for example charging a smartphone or serving as a Bluetooth speaker, um, which are both cases where we've used um, second life battery cells, um, with companies like company called Gomi in, in Brighton in the United Kingdom, um, they have taken these battery cells, they use them in these new products and they found that about 80% of the cells are perfectly viable even when they may not be usable for our own purposes. So I think that's an example where we don't see the, you know, we never want to see a battery leave our orbit and our use. But in the occasional times that it does happen, we want to see those battery cells for example be used for their highest and best possible use and get a very productive second life out of them. That's just one example of many. Um, and so our goal really is to use repair, reuse and second life practices to extend the life of the various um, components of our vehicles. Jumping upstream just a little bit for a second. We also are doing some really nice innovative things around material sourcing and thinking about how to decarbonize the um, initial materials. For example like using low carbon aluminum that's processed on renewable energy for um, components to our bike or scooter or using um, recycled plastic for the fenders, which is something that we're currently trialing with a pilot in a few markets. Um, shortly and so we're also looking upstream as well. And then of course, once we've done that, we want to keep those products on the street lasting longer.

Speaker B: Yeah, Love it. Great to hear.

Speaker C: It's a fun, it's, it's certainly a fun one because it's one of those things that both drives down carbon at the company, but also has a really tight interplay with, um, how cities view us and also our financial performance as well.

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. We're starting to run out of time, Andrew. We're going to jump into our final five questions if you're ready.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Ah, all right. What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

Speaker C: Yeah, I, you know, I think my initial reaction there is, is to be humble. I think, you know, for example, I tend to be fairly reluctant to be saying other companies should be doing as we do or be doing X, Y or Z, or that we're setting an example for the industry simply because every business is different. And so I'd much rather sort of be in a more humble position of doing what we can, knowing that there's always more to do and trying to walk the walk instead of talking the talk.

Speaker B: What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

Speaker C: Um, back to circular economy. I really like some of the stuff that I'm seeing around technology driven circular economy innovations. Things where I'm seeing the extraction of high value materials, um, from things like motors, for example. I think that to be able to bring high value materials back into the economy without having to totally reprocess them or look at raw materials is incredibly exciting.

Speaker B: What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read?

Speaker C: Um, a classic here, but, um, the End of Nature by Bill McKibben. Um, if you imagine you've heard of it, but I think this was, is one of the most sort of. It was the foundational book on climate change. M. And he was a New Yorker writer before penning that book, but he was the first person to write about climate change for the popular audience. And I think it's just such an interesting perspective to see, one, how long ago he wrote that. But two, the way, the way he presented it to the public, uh, in a way that was truly innovative for its time and obviously quite right in its, uh, foundation in terms of its science and what we're living through today.

Speaker B: What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

Speaker C: I would say if I can give a few. You. I think you had a plug in there. Um, I, I appreciate it. Um, you know, one, you know, one is tapping the expertise within our own organization. I think people often, you know, look fully externally to have, you know, as a resource, but, um, and they're often barraged by outside resources. But I've found that looking within the team, whether it's our logistics team, our hardware team, our supply chain team, these are folks that are living day to day, uh, in the work and I think if they're given the right tools and asked the right questions can be incredibly, incredibly helpful. Um, the second, just the opposite of what I just shared from looking internally, I think looking externally towards folks that have an expertise in carbon is incredibly important. You know, we've leveraged um, and used Opterra for our carbon services and our carbon inventory work. And you know, that's an example where they have an expertise and in many ways are an outsourced sustainability arm of the company where we just don't have the internal, uh, capacity. So, you know, I think at one hand looking externally and other, uh, hand looking internally, I think is, you know, uh, incredibly valuable.

Speaker B: And finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Lime?

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker C: I mean, one thing that I'm really excited about is we just released a carbon roadmap on Lime sustainability page, so you can look us up at li me and I'm also, uh, reasonably active on LinkedIn, but probably can't be found many other places on social media, but folks can certainly find me there.

Speaker A: Wonderful.

Speaker B: Andrew, it's so great to chat with you and learn about all the great work Lime has been doing to really reduce a lot of emissions across your value chain and what you're doing in the circular economy. Wonderful to hear about this work that Lime's been doing. So thank you so much, Andrew for joining us and thank you for making the world a better place.

Speaker C: Thanks so much for having me, Josh. I really appreciate it. Thanks for all the work you do.

Speaker A: Well, that's it for this episode of Sustainable Nation.

Speaker B: We'd love to hear from you.

Speaker A: If you have feedback on the show, have ideas for future guests, or have questions you'd love to hear us ask. Email them to joshustustridge.com and if you

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Speaker A: be so grateful if you would subscribe, rate and review our podcast. Thank you and we'll see you next time.

Speaker C: Sam,