City Cycling 2018 in Erlangen

City Cycling – Cycling for a better climate

The Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy joined the City Cycling Event - working together to promote cycling, climate protection and quality of life!

STADTRADELN („CITY CYCLING“) is a campaign of the pan-European Climate Alliance, the world’s biggest network of cities unified by the common commitment to reduce CO₂ emissions by 10 % every five years.

Thus, the CITY CYCLING campaign supports the communities’ goal of reducing CO₂ emissions by encouraging the participants to switch their car with a bicycle and cycle as many kilometers as possible for three consecutive weeks. In the course of these three weeks, all participants –school classes, associations, companies, individual citizens as well as politicians and celebrities – can collect their kilometers travelled in their personal online journal of the CITY CYCLING homepage. The group results are published and the possibility to compare your team’s scores with other competitors provides for extra fun and motivation while at the same time actively promoting eco-friendly mobility.

Just like last year, the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg joined the Erlangen community to participate in the CITY CYCLING campaign. This year, the “Helmis” team consisted of 16 passionate hobby-cyclists, each one of them ready to leave the car in the garage as often as possible to contribute to the Climate Alliance’s good cause. In the end, the “Helmis” collected 4.822,6 km as a team in total by travelling to work, shopping for groceries, taking their children to Kindergarten or school and going on bike trips in their spare time. With their efforts, the “Helmis” avoided the production of 684,8 kg CO₂ – saving the world while having fun!

When taking a look at the overall result, the whole community of Erlangen covered a total of 110.238 km (which equates to an average of 153,84 km per participant) and thus saved 21.845 kg of CO₂ over the course of the campaign (which makes an average 38 kg of CO₂ per person), ranking on place 105 of 872 communities in total. Each year, more and more communities take up the initiative to make the world a little better with the help of a little motivation and muscle strength.

The “Helmis” are also already looking forward to next year’s CITY CYCLING challenge, eager to establish an annual tradition that perfectly fits the institute’s principles.