Section:GDN 1N PaGe:29 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 18:03 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Tuesday 27 August 2019 The Guardian •Financial^29
Uber’s claims
to cut traffi c
undermined
by its own
research
Jasper JollyAn Uber advertising campaign in Lon-
don has claimed that its car-pooling
service reduces traffi c, contradicting
the fi ndings of the US ride-hailing app
company’s own research.
A large billboard poster displayed
in London this month said: “Uber Pool
reduces traffi c by moving more people
in fewer cars.”
It was displayed at a busy junction
near two of Transport for London’s
main offi ces in Southwark. The poster
has since been replaced.
The claim contradicts evidence
from a study sponsored by Uber and
the fellow ride-hailing app company
Lyft, which showed that both were
together responsible for as much as
13% of miles travelled by vehicles in
the centre of San Francisco, one of six
US cities studied. The report by the
consultancy Fehr & Peers was based
on data from Uber and Lyft.
In a blog post accompanying the
research, Chris Pangilinan , Uber’s
head of global policy for public trans-
portation, acknowledged that the
evidence showed that his company
and Lyft were likely to be contributing
to an increase in congestion.
The eff ect of ride-hailing apps on
congestion is contested. They could
reduce traffi c by encouraging people
leave their cars at home, or they could
increase the number of vehicles on the
road if it encouraged people to switch
from public transport.
Uber faces a TfL decision on 25
September as to whether its London
operating licence will be renewed. Last
year the company won a temporary
legal reprieve on a ban by saying it had
changed its policies on drivers’ back-
ground checks and crime reporting.
Last month Uber said it had 100
million monthly active users in 65
countries, and that its car-pooling ser-
vice, which allows multiple separate
users to share the same vehicle, had
saved 1.7m driving miles in the UK cap-
ital this year. London is one of Uber’s
top fi ve cities globally.
The company has been unable to
provide the methodology for the claim
made in the London ad or to provide
evidence of any assessment that took
into account the overall eff ect of the
pooling service on traffi c.
Asked about the poster, an Uber
spokeswoman said: “We often run
marketing campaigns all over the
world to showcase the many features
and products available through the
Uber app, whether that’s our safety
toolkit or Uber Pool. ”Underfl oor heating Plan to harness
warmth from the tube for homes
Jillian AmbroseT
he stifl ing subterranean
temperatures on the
tube’s Northern line
will soon begin keeping
Islington homes cosy
through the colder
months under a new scheme to
harness the heat generated by the
London Underground.
By the end of the year, the project
will pipe heat from the underground
into hundreds of homes and
businesses that are part of an
Islington district heating scheme.
The project is one of a growing
number of schemes across the UK
designed to warm British homes
using waste heat from factories,
power plants, disused mine shafts
and rivers.
The hunt for alternative sources
of renewable energy has gained pace
following the government’s pledge
to ban boilers that run on gas from
new-build homes from 2025.
The Islington heat network
already keeps about 700 homes
warm by channelling heat created
in the Bunhill energy centre, which
generates electricity, into local
council housing, schools and a
leisure centre.
The next phase of the project,
due to be completed in the comingneed to fi nd a way to take the carbon
out of our heating system,” Rotheray
said. “The opportunity that has
become clear to the decentralised
energy community is the idea of
capturing waste heat and putting it
to use locally .”
British Sugar’s Norfolk factory
pipes the waste heat produced while
cooking syrup into a neighbouring
18-hectare (45-acre) greenhouse
used to grow medical cannabis. It
pumps some of its carbon emissions
into the greenhouse for the plants to
convert to oxygen, too.
An even greater source of heat
lies below many of Britain’s towns
and cities: in the geothermal energy
trapped in water at the bottom
of old mines. Stoke-on-Trent is
working on a £52m project to tap
energy from hot water pooling▼ The scheme involves taking waste
heat from the Northern line under
Islington for some 450 local homes
PHOTOGRAPH: OLI SCARFF/GETTY Islington is
already using
heat from its
Bunhill plant
for local homes
and businessesmonths, will extend the network to
another 450 homes and capture the
heat from the tube network.
The project could pave the way for
district heating schemes across the
capital to warm homes with cheap,
low-carbon heat from London’s
Underground lines.
The Greater London Authority
estimates there is enough heat
wasted in London to meet 38% of the
city’s heating needs.
Tim Rotheray, director of the
Association for Decentralised
Energy, said district heating schemes
were spreading as a low-cost means
to tackle the climate emergency.
“Almost half the energy used in
the UK is for heat, and a third of UK
emissions are from heating. With the
government declaring that we must
be carbon neutral within 30 years wedeep underground. This will heat
conventional water before it is
pumped through the network
to customers. Stoke city council
estimates the scheme, operational
by the winter of 2020, could cut its
carbon emissions by an estimated
12,000 tonnes a year.
In Edinburgh, engineers at
Ramboll have developed a plan
to create a heat network that uses
the water pooled in a vast disused
mine as a giant underground
thermal battery. Paul Steen, who
has proposed the project, believes
the mine water off ers “massive
potential” to help the city meet its
sustainability goals by connecting it
to a renewable heating and cooling
distribution system.
The fl ooded mine system lies up
to 500 metres below ground and is
fi ve miles long. During the summer,
heat produced by heavy industry
could be pumped down into the
aquifer, where it will slowly raise the
temperature of the water. During
the winter, the mine water would be
pumped to the surface for heating
homes and businesses.
Engineers in Glasgow have even
found potential in the River Clyde.
The city’s £250m Queen’s Quay
regeneration project in Clydebank
will host a project to extract heat
from the river and pipe it into a
network of 1,400 homes, businesses
and public buildings.100m
Monthly users claimed by Uber,
in 65 countries. TfL will rule on
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