LAUSR

Abstract Transport contributed 26% of New Zealand’s direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2014 (MFE, 2017). In the same year private car journeys made up 79% of trips nationally and 71% of trips in the capital city Wellington (MOT, 2016b). Electric bicycles (E-bikes) present an opportunity to reduce those emissions. A life cycle assessment approach was used to estimate the environmental impacts of a greater uptake of E-bikes that would displace the use of family size cars powered by petrol or diesel engines. The potential life cycle impacts for the E-bike were found to be favourable compared to the car for most impact categories, including GHG emissions. This was largely due to the approximately 80% share of renewable electricity generation in New Zealand. This electricity mix also meant that the E-bike’s environmental impacts during use were small compared with those related to its production and disposal. The environmental impacts were evaluated for recharging the battery at for four different times of day, representing different average electricity generation mixes. This was found to have very little influence on the environmental performance of the E-bike. The environmental impacts of people switching from other transport modes to E-bikes were calculated for four different user groups in Wellington, New Zealand. These four groups had different transport preferences that were defined with respect to their barriers to cycling: Safe Cyclists, Likely Cyclists, Recreational Cyclists, and Hesitant Cyclists. The groups provided the basis for developing scenarios representing city-wide mode switches from car, bus, train and walking—to use of E-bikes. The Safe Cyclists scenario performed best for 9 of the 15 impact categories. This suggests the desirability of focusing on specific user-groups and their needs in order to change transport behaviours. In particular, in this case it implies a need to prioritise cyclist safety in transport planning (such as providing separate infrastructure for E-bikes).