Do e-bike incentives reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

I’m always curious whether incentive programs work. Some of them seem logical. If you received an incentive to switch to a high energy furnace, then you kind of have to be using that high energy furnace. Of course, you might be keeping the temperature higher than you would have otherwise but that’s a topic for another post. But when rebates are for e-bikes is there the same impact? Will people actually switch out of their cars and onto an e-bike? This was the question asked by Bigazzi, Hassanpour, and Bardutz (2025). They wanted to identify what the greenhouse gas reductions were from e-bike purchases associated with an income-conditioned rebate program. An income-conditioned program just means that the rebate a household could receive was bigger if their income was less.

They studied participants in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada during a rebate program and followed up with participants a year after purchase. What they found was interesting, though perhaps not surprising as I’ll discuss. Participants who received higher rebates and were thus at lower income levels showed the greatest change. They started off using their car more before getting the bike and therefore reduced their travel by car the most. I think this makes sense because individuals with lower incomes often have fewer choices on where to live. This can force them to more distant or less accessible areas which then require them to drive further to get to employment or other opportunities. In addition, there is more incentive to reduce travel costs by lower income levels.

The researchers asked participants about e-bike versus conventional bike use and found that e-bikes were more likely to replace car trips that conventional bikes were, but conventional bikes were more likely to replace walking and transit trips. The e-bikes were used regularly (3-4 days a week for 30 to 70 km). Over the course of 12 months, the rebate recipients reduced automobile use by an average of 49 km per week. This occurred through both substituting car trips for e-bike use and other changes in travel habits.

So what is the greenhouse gas savings from this? The average reduction across rebate recipients was 16 kg of CO2 equivalent. There are of course other benefits including reduced air pollution emissions and increased physical activity that were not quantified.