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Sustainability improvements as business strategy: Clean solutions for shared mobility and food delivery at the Beijing Cleantech Hackathon

How can firms like Mobike and Meituan reduce their environmental footprint while simultaneously advancing their business models? This was the central theme of the Beijing Cleantech Hackathon, held at Innoway, a start-up space in Zhongguancun, Beijing’s well-known science and technology park, on 20 and 21 October 2018. GIZ sponsored the 12-hour hackathon which was organized by The Beijing Energy Network (BEN) and New Energy Nexus. The event brought together some of Beijing’s most talented students, professionals, developers, and entrepreneurs to come up with innovative solutions for tackling the wide array of sustainability challenges facing China today. The individual challenges were sponsored by Mobike and Meituan, two firms which have been instrumental in shaping the wider developments of China’s contemporary mobility and food-delivery sector. While Meituan’s Qingshan Foundation asked participants to develop solutions to promote the recycling of delivery waste at universities, Mobike challenged participants to come up with innovative solutions…

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Future Mobility

Transport and Climate Change Week in Berlin: Digital Mobility, New Business Models and Innovative Planning

The second Transport and Climate Change (TCC) Week, which included the Climate Action in Mobility Conference (CAMC), highlighted the importance and need of a transformational change in the transport sector to limit global warming by developing climate-friendly solutions. It was hosted by GIZ on behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) in Berlin from 24 to 28 September 2018. This year’s event focused on digital mobility, new business models and innovative planning in the transport sector. Nearly 200 experts and officials from ministries, institutions and city authorities from 20 countries, many from developing and emerging economies, exchanged their experiences in shaping the transport sector and discussed how to achieve a paradigm shift in transport around the world. The TCC Week started with a series of workshops on various topics in the field of sustainable transport, initiating expert dialogues with colleagues from around the…

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Urban Transport

The Changing Face of Cycling in Germany: From Tradition to Shared Economy

200 years ago, German inventor Philipp Moritz Fischer built the world’s first bicycle. Today, Germans own almost 74 million bikes and cover a distance of altogether nearly 25 billion kilometers or 300 kilometers per inhabitant and per year. It is particularly the improved image of cycling that has driven more and more people to use their bicycle. With a broader variety of models and the introduction of innovative materials and technologies, bicycles have been converted into lifestyle products. Even though statistics make it seem as if almost every German owns their own bike, bike-sharing has been playing an ever-increasing role in the cycling culture in Germany. Bike-sharing was first introduced in Munich around 2000 by NextBike and Call-a-Bike, a company of Deutsche Bahn. The service was co-financed by the city to promote eco-friendly and convenient urban transport. Little by little, more cities and providers entered the German market, including international…

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Articles

The Evolution of Free-Floating Bike-Sharing in China

The evolution of free-floating bike-sharing in China Authors: Sebastian Ibold, Dr. Christoph Nedopil Review: Sandra Retzer, Tina Huang, Florian Ibold Since the explosive growth of free-floating bike-sharing in China starting in 2016, it has been described as one of the country’s hottest industries. China’s official state-run press agency Xinhua called it one of the “four great new inventions” in modern times (the other three being e-commerce, high-speed rail and mobile-payment). The bike-sharing industry was praised for providing a healthy lifestyle and a key to achieve more sustainable urban transport systems, with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution significantly. The expectations put on free-floating bike-sharing were no less than reviving the “kingdom of bicycles”. But instead of a smooth bike-ride, the bike sharing industry in China has experienced nothing short of a roller-coaster ride: From 2016 onwards, a growing number of start-ups entered the bike-sharing market, resulting…

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Events

Better Transport, Better World? – Sustainable Transport at the 2nd World Transport Convention

Can better transport create a better world? This question was at the heart of this year’s World Transport Convention. From 19-21 June 2018, Chinese and international companies, ministries, institutions and related representatives in the transportation sector gathered to discuss this question and exchange views on recent developments, new products and new technologies. GIZ representatives Sandra Retzer, Dr. Christoph Nedopil and Sebastian Ibold, as well as Siemens Senior Management Consultant for Cyber Security, Thomas Gereke, contributed with keynote speeches on sustainable transportation as well as data management and data security in Germany. A large exhibition hall on the first floor, mostly filled with Chinese companies, displayed their recent technological developments. Different booths showcased the latest street sweepers and garbage trucks. Alibaba allowed visitors to follow real-time data showing Beijing’s traffic jam hot spots on multiple large screens in a futuristic setting. A gallery at the end of the hall gave on…

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Urban Transport

Reviving the Kingdom of Bicycles

To jointly elaborate on how to make China’s cities cycling-ready, the GIZ “Mobility and Fuels Strategy as a Contribution to the Transport Transition in China”(MFS) project together with the GIZ “Sino-German Cooperation on Low Carbon Transport” (CLCT) project, the GIZ “Sino-German Urbanisation Partnership” project (SGUP), the Ministry of Transport (MoT), the China Academy of Transportation Sciences (CATS) and SinoCarbon Innovation & Investment Co.,Ltd., jointly organized a cycling workshop on April 12, 2018 in Beijing. The aim of this workshop was to elaborate on challenges and opportunities of cycling in the urban context, related policies and best practices in China and Germany. Besides the organizers, various representatives of provincial transport planning institutes and cycling experts from Germany attended the workshop. After a welcoming by Mr. Wang Guangmin, Head of the Environmental Protection Division of the MoT, Ms. Sandra Retzer, Head of the cluster Urbanisation, Transport and Energy of GIZ China, introduced…

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Events

What Can Germany Learn from other Countries? – Reverse Innovation: Rethinking Urban Transport through Global Learning

In Europe, close cooperation and exchange among cities and countries have a long tradition. Especially in the framework of joint European Union (EU) activities, best practices in sustainable urban mobility are exchanged and innovative ideas spread. Beyond Europe’s borders, transport-related innovations are growing rapidly in developing and emerging countries in the recent years. Not only in mega cities worldwide, decision makers, entrepreneurs and plan­ners are currently testing new approaches to urban mobility – driven by enormous pressures, such as urban sprawl, congestion and air pollution, but also new opportunities related to new digital technologies and rapid economic development. Learning more about their successes as well as potential difficulties may inspire sustainable urban transport develop­ment in Europe and Germany. With the intention to provide a glimpse to the transport innovations of developing and emerging countries and discuss the vision of Tommorow’s Cities in the light of global innovation, the German Environment…

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Urban Transport

“It is not our task to make car ownership most convenient”

Part 2 of the Interview with Dr. Friedemann Kunst, former Head of the Transport Department, in Berlin Q: Urbanisation in China is progressing at a pace much faster than ever experienced in Germany. Do you think Chinese cities can nevertheless learn from the post-war development of Berlin? What are mistakes to be avoided and success factors to be considered in terms of the transportation system and Berlin’s spatial development? A: Urban and transport development are very closely related. The kind of transport system we need depends highly on how the city’s spatial design is structured. We have always considered that it’s the role of the public administration to ensure access to essential places and institutions. It is all about organising the city in such a way that people have good access to the places they need and want to go such as working, shopping, health, education and leisure activities. This…

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Articles

Bicycle Sharing in Beijing

On 16th of June 2012, the pilot phase of Beijing municipal public bicycle sharing service was inaugurated in Dongcheng and Chaoyang districts with 2,000 bicycles and 63 rental stations. Bicycle sharing is becoming more and more popular among Chinese cities. Newly released factsheet on Bicycle Sharing in Beijing: “Factsheet Bicycle Share” Decades ago, the bicycle used to be a predominant transport mode in China so that China was known as the “Kingdom of Bicycles”. With the booming economy and urbanisation in the later 1990s, which have subsequently led to rapid motorisation, China is eventually losing this transport “style”. The share of cycling in the total modal split has dramatically declined in many Chinese cities. In order to ease this situation, Beijing municipal government has implemented a series of policies to promote public transit, one of which was to establish Beijing’s first municipal-lead public bicycle sharing system.

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