RP2021e1: Report: Estimating the GHG Emission Impact from Sharing Economy Mobility Services

In Australia, various City Councils, including the City of Adelaide, are pursuing carbon neutrality at municipal-scale based on their operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As passenger transport is a major component of city operational GHG emissions, there is an opportunity for shared mobility services to play a role in reducing those emissions. This preliminary carbon modelling report has focussed on the GHG benefit from expanding shared mobility services in the Adelaide Local Government Area, although the results should be equally valid in other similar inner-urban precincts.

The Adelaide Shared Mobility (ASM) GHG model was constructed in Microsoft EXCEL using only publicly available data from the City of Adelaide’s annual community GHG emissions reporting and the Vehicle-Kilometres-Travelled (VKT) projections published in a report titled, Carbon Neutral Adelaide - Foundation Report. Seven shared mobility services were considered with regard to their potential impact over a 20-year period on reducing operational or embodied emissions or acting as a catalyst to reduce GHG emissions including – ridehailing, carsharing, carpooling, bikesharing, ridesplitting and using autonomous vehicles.

The results of the modelling showed that the current state-wide decarbonising strategy of reducing electricity grid emissions coupled with the expected uptake of electric vehicles will have a significant impact on reducing transport GHG emissions, and to a certain degree will cannibalise the potential emission impact of shared mobility services. The combined GHG savings of the considered sharing economy mobility services was found to be less than 1% of the total Adelaide LGA transport emissions for each of the modelled years. The opportunities for shared mobility services for lowering embodied emissions or being a catalyst to reduce other GHG emissions related to the Carbon Neutral Adelaide goal were also found to be not significant.