First off, any effort to reduce emissions is great news. Thanks Lyft for the early Earth Day gift:) It's effectively cleaning up someone else's mess (in this case, capturing landfill methane was one example from the announcement) rather than their own, but it's an improvement nonetheless. If you have to use Lyft or Uber, use Lyft.
That said, a couple notes:
1) Lyft is most likely just offsetting for the ride itself, not for "deadhead" miles between "rides" (without passengers) or between a driver's house and the first or last ride, which may be a large amount. See this CPUC report, p. 11.
2) Another import note is that Lyft is currently opposing a bill (see the 4/20 legislative analysis, bottom of page 4) which
"would require, beginning January 1, 2030, that 100% of the vehicles that are purchased, leased, owned, or contracted for by a transportation network company be zero-emission vehicles"
as well as setting interim goals for increasing zero-emissions VMT.
Lyft's opposition apparently is partly because Lyft doesn't have faith in their efforts to increase zero emission miles, and partly from a distaste for rules of any kind ("We're going to oppose any version of the bill that can be seen as a mandate", according to Tim McRae, VP of Energy at Silicon Valley Leadership Group, who argued on behalf of Lyft and Uber during the bill's hearing in committee on 4/17).
The bill is SB 1014, going through the California Senate this session. (And of course, Uber is opposed as well.)
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First off, any effort to reduce emissions is great news. Thanks Lyft for the early Earth Day gift :) It's effectively cleaning up someone else's mess (in this case, capturing landfill methane was one example from the announcement) rather than their own, but it's an improvement nonetheless. If you have to use Lyft or Uber, use Lyft.
That said, a couple notes:
1) Lyft is most likely just offsetting for the ride itself, not for "deadhead" miles between "rides" (without passengers) or between a driver's house and the first or last ride, which may be a large amount. See this CPUC report, p. 11.
2) Another import note is that Lyft is currently opposing a bill (see the 4/20 legislative analysis, bottom of page 4) which
as well as setting interim goals for increasing zero-emissions VMT.
Lyft's opposition apparently is partly because Lyft doesn't have faith in their efforts to increase zero emission miles, and partly from a distaste for rules of any kind ("We're going to oppose any version of the bill that can be seen as a mandate", according to Tim McRae, VP of Energy at Silicon Valley Leadership Group, who argued on behalf of Lyft and Uber during the bill's hearing in committee on 4/17).
The bill is SB 1014, going through the California Senate this session. (And of course, Uber is opposed as well.)
Portland's tech scene uses this really fantastic project: http://calagator.org/
The source is available on github: https://github.com/calagator/c...
There is also ActivateHub (which is a fork of Calagator) - Demo http://portland.activatehub.or..., Source: https://github.com/activate/Ac...