Dedicated bus lanes help reduce traffic
congestion in Ahmedabad, India.
Shell Foundation is an independent charity that applies business thinking to global development challenges such as sustainable mobility, access to energy and job creation through small enterprises. It focuses on developing self-sustaining solutions that can achieve sizeable impact in multiple countries.
EMBARQ is an international network of transport specialists, founded by Shell Foundation and the World Resources Institute in 2002, that helps reduce traffic congestion and pollution in megacities. Their solutions range from bus rapid transit systems to cycling routes and more efficient urban planning. In 2011, EMBARQ reached 1.2 million more people in Brazil, India, Mexico, Peru and Turkey. In India, for example, EMBARQ helped implement projects including the 27-km expansion of a dedicated lane for extended buses in Ahmedabad that now carry more than 100,000 passengers a day. In total, nearly 2 billion passenger journeys have been made on EMBARQ systems since its creation.
Harmful smoke from cooking on open fires and traditional stoves kills almost 2 million people a year. Since 2007, Shell Foundation and its partner Envirofit, a not-for-profit organisation, have worked to tackle this problem. They created a business together which produces and distributes affordable cookstoves in Africa and Asia that significantly reduce emissions, fuel use and cooking time. In 2010, Shell joined Shell Foundation, the UN Foundation and other public and private enterprises to form the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. The alliance aims to make 100 million cleaner-burning cookstoves available by 2020. New members committed $78 million to this initiative in 2011.
Shell Foundation was set up in 2000 with Shell providing a $250 million endowment and further contributions of $160 million.
