To avoid the disastrous effects of climate change, the United States needs to electrify its transportation sector as quickly as possible. But electrifying along isn’t enough. We must also reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 20 percent before the end of the decade to maintain a 1.5°C global climate trajectory. While both electrification and VMT reduction are distinct strategies, policymakers have a significant opportunity to create a symbiotic relationship between the two to deliver equitable, climate-aligned outcomes in their communities — by promoting electric bicycles.

Why e-bikes?

Electrification efforts have largely focused on replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles with electric vehicles. This emphasis is unsurprising given that we are a culturally car-centric country, with the average American driving about twice the number of miles per year as the average resident in Germany, France, or the United Kingdom. This reliance on personal vehicles is a symptom of a nation dominated by highways and urban sprawl, where few have access to affordable and reliable public transportation, and where cities have a dearth of sidewalks and bike lanes.

Cutting VMT by enhancing accessibility will require a variety of interventions, including enabling more compact development and prioritizing climate-aligned infrastructure investments in bike lanes, transit, sidewalks, etc. This will in turn create an enabling environment to shift from gasoline single-occupancy vehicles to more efficient modes of transportation such as walking, biking, and public transit.

In 2021, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that over half of all trips were three miles or less and 60 percent of all vehicle trips were less than six miles. Even prior to the pandemic, many car trips were often this short. Given that short trips dominate transportation patterns in the United States, policymakers can target short vehicle trips with combined mode-shift and electrification strategies. A combined approach will provide their communities with a powerful way to achieve compounded benefits for accelerated transportation decarbonization. Electric bikes (e-bikes) can serve as a powerful tool to advance both transportation electrification and mode shift.

E-bike adoption today

In recent years, a growing number of cities have begun to recognize the environmental, economic, and social benefits of e-bikes. As e-bike sales continue to outpace those of electric vehicles, policymakers and others are beginning to seriously contemplate ways in which they can make e-bikes affordable and accessible to as many people as possible.

Initiatives such as Denver, Colorado’s wildly popular e-bike incentive program are showing that policy can be a powerful lever to accelerate e-bike adoption. Denver residents routinely claim vouchers within minutes of them becoming available. In 2022 alone, the program put more than 4,700 e-bikes on the streets, with over 65 percent of the funding going toward low-income residents. And the purchasers of these e-bikes biked an average of 26 miles per week. The program continues to be wildly popular. Many cities and counties have followed Denver’s example and launched programs of their own. In fact, since 2022, ten states plus DC have announced an e-bike incentive program in some form. Cities and states are also building out safer bike infrastructure to encourage e-bike use.

The E-Bike Calculator

The success of programs at the city level, such as Denver, or the state level, such as Vermont, provides compelling evidence that e-bike rebate programs are effective. But policymakers still lack good data on the impacts of e-bikes, and many decision makers are looking for further proof that the investment is worth it. That’s why RMI created the E-Bike Environment and Economic Impact Assessment Calculator to give policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders the data they need to make data-driven decisions.

The calculator analyzes the environmental, health, and economic impacts that e-bikes could have if they replaced a significant percentage of short motor vehicle trips under five miles. Stakeholders can use the calculator to see:

1. The environmental and economic impacts of replacing vehicle trips with e-bikes with variation by season at the state and city level;
2. The impacts of potential city or state e-bike incentive programs. Users can input their own variables, such as the total budget, timeline, and the portion of incentives for income-qualified participants to see the potential impacts of a proposed program.
3. How increased e-bike adoption will reduce greenhouse gas emissions; air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter (PM₅), and carbon monoxide; and vehicle miles traveled;
4. The degree to which reductions in PM₅ can prevent deaths and work absences due to illnesses related to PM2.5;
5. How much money people can save due to reduced fuel and maintenance costs for their vehicles, even considering battery replacement costs for their e-bikes; and
6. Statewide projections across three EV adoption scenarios (business as usual, mid growth, and climate aligned) and how a short trip shift to e-bikes can help to meet state decarbonization goals

The information the calculator provides can help stakeholders set mode-shifting and/or e-bike targets and understand how e-bike efforts, including e-bike incentive programs, can contribute to climate action plans, transportation equity, and environmental justice goals.

Benefits for the nation’s states with the highest transportation emissions

States have begun to join cities in launching their own e-bike incentive programs and/or prioritizing access to biking infrastructure within urban environments. For the 10 states with the largest CO₂ emissions, these efforts could significantly slash emissions, reduce the use of gasoline, and save residents money. These states also have a significant percentage of trips taken under five miles annually, as shown in the chart below.

Using historical weather data to assess the portion of trips that can be reasonably shifted to e-bikes for the summer and winter season, the calculator shows that shifting a portion of the vehicle trips under five miles to e-bikes in these states will result in several benefits.

State-Level Environmental Benefits

Over 10 years, cutting short car trips and replacing them with e-bike trips will help dramatically slash CO₂e emissions and gas usage, as shown in the table below.

Across the 10 states, over 31.7 million metric tons of climate pollution could be avoided over ten years — the same amount of pollution produced by 8.4 coal-fired plants in one year. The average American driver uses 489 gallons of gas per year; increased e-bike adoption could prevent the need for more than 3.3 billion gallons of gas, a reduction equivalent to the annual gas usage of over 6.8 million vehicles. Switching to e-bikes for short trips would also help states meet their VMT reduction goals. For example, Maryland’s December 2023 Climate Pollution Reduction Plan outlined a goal of reducing VMT by 20 percent by 2050 in order to reduce the state’s overall emissions by 60 percent by 2031.

Colorado is also a leader in this space: in 2021, it passed the Colorado Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Planning Bill, which provides funding for transportation projects that limit pollution and expand multimodal options, such as bike paths, while limiting funding for projects that will increase emissions through induced demand, such as new highways or road expansions.

The average American drives approximately 1,200 miles a month; cutting vehicle trips in the top 10 states would be the equivalent of removing tens of thousands of cars from the roads. E-bikes will likely continue to be an important piece of the puzzle and help relieve congestion, improve health outcomes, increase access to transportation, and more.

State-Level Economic Benefits

State-level e-bike programs would also have economic benefits. Using the default trip replacement goal numbers from the calculator, residents across the 10 states would save over $11.5 billion over 10 years as a result of e-bikes' lower costs fuel and maintenance costs. If bike infrastructure is built out, some households might feel comfortable getting rid of a second or third car, saving even more money from reduced car payments, insurance costs, registration, parking, and emissions testing. Research in Germany found that one-fifth of e-bike users either sold their car or decided to abandon previous plans to purchase a car. As vehicle expenses increase, these findings illustrate how e-bikes can help people significantly reduce their transportation costs and help residents maintain economic mobility while saving money.

E-bike initiatives can also meaningfully increase access to transportation options. The Can Do Colorado E-Bike Pilot, which distributed e-bikes to low-income workers, helped serve unmet transportation needs in a cost-effective and energy efficient way, and reduced participants’ expenses.

Benefits for the nation’s cities with the highest VMT

Data analyzing the top 10 largest metro areas by VMT per capita for 2024 can be used to analyze the impacts of cutting VMT at the city-level.

Many of these cities are in fast-growing and popular states. Cutting short vehicle trips and providing residents with e-bikes will create many economic and environmental benefits for the cities. Using the calculator defaults, we find that switching to e-bikes would be the equivalent of taking 48,000 vehicles off the road.

City-level environmental benefits

Across the 10 cities, over 1.18 million tons of climate pollution could be avoided over a decade, the equivalent of emissions produced by 3.1 natural-gas power plants in one year, or over 2.7 million barrels of oil. This is also the equivalent to the annual avoided emissions from 350 wind turbines coming online.

City-Level Economic Benefits

Access to e-bikes would also help city residents save money. Across ten years, switching short trips to e-bikes could save residents over $400.5 million dollars in avoided fuel and maintenance costs. E-bike maintenance is often relatively inexpensive, as many mechanical problems can be addressed by the user themselves without requiring a shop, and parts are relatively inexpensive for the physical systems.

How E-Bikes Improve Access to Transportation and Health Outcomes

While this tool does not measure e-bikes' full effects on health outcomes or economic mobility, it’s fair to say that widespread e-bike adoption would likely improve both.

As the American Lung Association notes, today, more than 4 in 10 Americans — over 135 million people — live in communities impacted by unhealthy levels of air pollution, leading to increased rates of asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer, and premature death. These poor health outcomes disproportionately affect communities of color and lower-income communities.

Increased e-bike adoption would help address these negative effects. Reducing PM_2.5 is an especially powerful way to address these negative effects. The pollutant comes from the brake pads and tires of vehicles, as well as the combustion of fuels, and significantly impacts health outcomes, as it contributes to rising rates of cardiac, vascular, neurological, and pulmonary disease, as well as some types of cancer.

Data from the CO-Benefits Risk Assessment (COBRA) Health Impacts Screening and Mapping Tool has been integrated into the e-bike calculator to demonstrate the health outcomes of reducing PM_2.5 due to a decrease in driving.

Reducing PM_2.5 would also improve productivity, as illnesses due to the pollutant result in lost work days. The table below shows how many lost workdays could be prevented in a decade in the states with the highest transportation emissions.

Gas-powered vehicles also produce nitrogen oxides from fuel combustion, which can harm the respiratory system and increase the risk of developing asthma and chronic lung diseases.

Since e-bikes require riders to move their bodies, they would also improve health outcomes. Research has found that e-bikers get more exercise than regular bicycle riders, more than doubling their use of bicycles for transportation as they can often travel longer distances and are easier to use on more challenging terrain. Furthermore, e-bikes can improve access to transportation in transit deserts. A pilot project that distributes e-bikes to low-income essential workers in diverse locations around Colorado showed that the e-bikes serve unmet transportation needs and connect residents to employment opportunities. In some areas, the bikes were shown to be competitive with cars, with the travel speeds and timing being almost equal.

Parting Insights

While the calculator does not yet analyze how safe and connected bicycling infrastructure can promote increased ridership, it is important to acknowledge that the public must feel safe riding a bicycle to effectively shift trips from vehicles to e-bikes and realize their benefits. States, cities, counties, and metropolitan planning organizations are responsible for significant portions of the nation’s transportation planning and can direct funding to protected bike lanes and related infrastructure that will encourage ridership. Implementing these changes in cities and suburbs alike will reduce emissions, save people money, and create more livable, thriving communities.

Please reach out to our team with any questions about the underlying calculations or let us know if you would like your city to be included in the tool.