Empowering the green revolution through multimodality
We are at a crossroads. While we stand on the verge of a digital revolution that promises to be greener and more sustainable, we also still cling to the paradigms of our industrial past. It is this straddling of old and new that stymies our progress despite having the tools necessary to accelerate this revolution. On this 51st anniversary of #earthday, I found it a good time to reflect on where we are, what our best potential outcomes are, and how best to get there.
It is heartening to observe how the current political, business and social climates have shifted. There is a sense of urgency and a truer desire to find actionable solutions that permeate our discourse at present. This level of focused dialogue is an important step in the right direction and I am encouraged to see environmental concerns becoming more of a priority.
For me, the spark of sustainable innovation ignited in 2001 while I was reading Natural Capitalism, written by Paul Hawken, Hunter Lovins and Amory Lovins. Natural Capitalism is, at least in my opinion, the bible for thinking about how to align our economy with the natural world and it served as a catalyst, transforming my career. Since then, I have dedicated my academic and entrepreneurial career to the pursuit of sustainable entrepreneurship and smart cities. In 2011, 10 years after reading Natural Capitalism, I had the privilege to coauthor a sequel titled Climate Capitalism with Hunter Lovins. I point to Lovins as an inspiration for my career and it was great to work with her to spread these ideas even further.
10 years, 5 startups, 2 more books and a number of continents later, I am now leading a growing tech company, Iomob, which stands for the Internet of Mobility. As a mobility on demand platform, Iomob allows large public and private enterprise organizations to offer seamless multimodal mobility solutions within and between cities. Accelerating the decarbonization of the transportation sector is at the core of Iomob’s, and my, vision.
Currently, the transportation sector is not pulling its weight in achieving our common 2030 and 2050 carbon reduction goals. This is despite having the tools necessary to decarbonize ground transport, including: clean high-speed rail; public transit networks; electric vehicles (EV’s) and charging networks; and shared mobility systems. The missing element is the seamless merging of these separate modes of transport. The ability to efficiently discover, plan, book and pay for these various options for a complete single journey in a single, easy-to-use mobile application would be the impetus that drives rapid growth in the sector. Iomob is directly bridging this gap by offering this seamless integration while at the same time launching the Zero Carbon initiative. This initiative is meant to inform users of the carbon impact of the individual legs of their journey and offer voluntary carbon impact offset options that are localized. Zero Carbon empowers users to travel with a net-zero carbon impact, bolstered through data, freedom of choice and real-world convenience.
In this same vein, I am hosting a Zero Carbon Mobility webinar series powered by Iomob to discuss ways to accelerate the decarbonization of ground transport and what role mobility-on-demand services can play. Stay tuned for the announcement of the initial webinar of the series, “The Path to Zero Carbon Transport through Multimodal Mobility”.
I look forward to Earth Day 2022 when I expect to share an update on the positive impact that Iomob’s Zero Carbon initiative has had on transforming the transportation industry into a greener, better informed and more conscientious space. Bridging the gap between the old and the new takes a concerted effort from all of us, and the Zero Carbon initiative is Iomob’s contribution to that effort.
