The way in which we mobilize ourselves is changing. Every day around the world new initiatives are emerging that open up room for more sustainable innovative means of transportation, which contribute to improving our cities’ air quality and the environment, and therefore improve people’s quality of life. It is estimated that by 2020 the demand for buses will dominate the global market, even the most ambitious reports dare to assert by 2040 that 80% of the world’s fleet of municipal buses will be electric, or at least the most recent study by BNEF (Bloomberg New Energy Finance) states so.
Bogota is not alien to this reality. As Enel Group companies in Colombia with the purpose of turning our capital city into a smart city and a Latin American benchmark, we have created, developed and implemented initiatives that foster a cleaner and healthier mobility. An example of this is the 100%-electric bus that we have commissioned in the city, this is proof of concept that has been possible thanks to the support of the Bogota Mayor’s Office and Transmilenio. This is undoubtedly one of the great steps forward in terms of electric sustainability for Colombia, as not only is it the first of its kind in the world, but also significantly improves the environment and the city’s air quality: to date, in over 260 days of operation, it has stopped producing almost 84 tons of CO 2 (June 2018 figures).
We are convinced that electric mobility is the alternative that will allow us to further improve quality of life in our cities. This motivated us to implement in 2014 the first proof of concept plan comprised of 40 fully electric taxis, the largest electric public transport fleet in Latin America to date. These taxis rely on four charging stations with 34 connection points with an installed capacity to serve 308 vehicles per day, this in order to meet the demand as the number of electric taxis increase.
But this example is not limited to public transport, in favor of cleaner mobility the city of Bogota has more and more electric vehicles, and in order to meet the demand, we as Enel Group companies in Colombia, have been working to provide the city with an ever better service, by establishing more than 15 charging points, that is, sustainable electrical installations.
As a company we think that we should be an example of responsibility, which is why we motivate our employees to be the main ambassadors of sustainable mobility, and for this reason we launched the ECOCAR program, through which 20 of our employees could acquire a Renault electric vehicle, and this allowed them to significantly improve their quality of life, reducing CO2 emissions in the city, and it offered them the possibility of moving freely around the city at any time they wished.
In this same vein, we wanted to impact our companies’ workers in their entirety, so we have started the MoverNos program. This initiative seeks to generate environmentally friendly transportation, health and mobility habits in the city, so the program encourages our companies’ employees to share a car or taxi, to bike or walk when commuting from the house to the office.
In the same way we have been able continue with the E bike to work program for more than seven years, with a fleet of 48 electric bicycles to benefit more than 300 of the organization’s employees, and with over 11,600 trips to date. The positive lessons from this experience prompted us to implement the concept of shared bicycles externally. So we developed jointly with Capital Bicycle, Carulla Supermarkets and Scotiabank Colpatria’s sponsorship, the BiciCo app, which people can access to move around the city with electric bicycles, thus allowing us to improve mobility in a sustainable manner thanks to the example and the active contribution of all our workers.