“Global Challenge, Global Solutions” is a series hosted on Climasphere highlighting inspiring, innovative, and creative global solutions to the challenge of climate change in the lead up to the next major climate conference, COP22. These solutions have been provided by members of the Earth To Marrakech coalition, a group of more than 50 media organizations, civil society groups, and businesses from around the world who are raising their voices in a collective call to move from words to action on climate change. Let’s send a message, from Earth To Marrakech: The solutions to climate change are out there, and they’re inspiring. 

Creating an Urban Network for Electric Scooters

Through the Go­goro En­ergy Net­work, the com­pany has cre­ated a suite of electric scooter services, helping to improve urban air quality. The En­ergy Net­work con­sists of three key com­pon­ents: Smarts­coot­ers, Go­goro’s elec­tric scooter, which util­izes swap­pable bat­ter­ies; GoSta­tions, bat­tery-swap­ping vend­ing ma­chines loc­ated all over Taipei, where users can quickly ex­change spent bat­ter­ies for fresh ones; and GoChar­gers, the com­pany’s new at-home bat­tery char­ging sta­tions. To pro­mote shared-use of GoChar­gers, the com­pany of­fers them for free to busi­nesses, such as res­taur­ants or cafes, that make them pub­licly avail­able for at least 12 hours daily.

Since launch­ing in the sum­mer of 2015, more than 700 Gogoro customers have ridden more than 8 million km, and the Go­goro En­ergy Net­work has in­stalled more than 175 GoSta­tions with 7,000 bat­ter­ies be­ing swapped daily. In some areas of Taipei, GoSta­tions even out­num­ber gas sta­tions. The com­pany aims to ex­pand to the European mar­ket later in 2016.

RELEVANCE OF SOLUTION
Rapid urb­an­iz­a­tion and use of private auto­mo­biles is ex­acer­bat­ing air pol­lu­tion in cit­ies around the world. By mak­ing elec­tric per­sonal vehicles eas­ily ac­cess­ible, Go­goro helps to re­duce this en­vir­on­mental and health bur­den.

TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:

ENVIRONMENTAL
Ac­cord­ing to the com­pany, Go­goro own­ers have col­lect­ively saved 400,000 liters of gas­ol­ine and re­duced CO2 emis­sions by 767 tons.

SOCIAL
Urban air pol­lu­tion kills up to 1.2 mil­lion people every year. Elec­tric vehicles can help al­le­vi­ate this prob­lem.

ECONOMIC
In OECD coun­tries alone, air pol­lu­tion is es­tim­ated to cost so­ci­ety $1.7 tril­lion an­nu­ally.2 By in­tro­du­cing elec­tric vehicles to a broad audi­ence, Go­goro re­duces these costs.