evee’s mission is to accelerate electric vehicle adoption, powered by renewables, to support a cleaner future for all. And while the primary focus is to help our customers transition away from fossil fuel-powered cars towards electric, in pursuit of this goal evee produces its own set of operational emissions.
It would be against our values not to consider these emissions in our vision of a clean future, which is why we made the decision to offset them and become a carbon neutral organisation with Trace.
What is a carbon neutral business?
It would be remiss of us if we didn’t start by saying that, as is the case with most attempts at sustainability, the most important thing any of us can do is to reduce our impact first. Carbon offsets are an important tool in our efforts against climate change, but should only be wielded as a secondary attempt where emissions reduction practices aren’t possible.
“A business can claim to be carbon neutral when all of the carbon emissions produced by the business are equal to those avoided or removed from the atmosphere”, says Trace.
To achieve this, the business must purchase one verified carbon credit for every tonne of CO2 it produces, offsetting the emissions to become carbon neutral. It’s become an increasingly popular option for businesses wanting to minimise their environmental impact and take immediate climate action.
How did we become carbon neutral?
Measuring our carbon footprint
The first step in becoming a carbon neutral organisation is to measure how much carbon you produce, so you can then accurately offset it. The day to day operations of a business, including energy use, travel and waste, produce greenhouse gas emissions as a byproduct. To calculate your businesses’ carbon footprint, you must multiply how often you do the things that produce the emissions (otherwise known as the ‘activity rate’) by a specific emissions factor.
This can be a pretty difficult calculation to do if you’re not familiar with the figures – thankfully the team at Trace helped us out! We simply provided them with our business information (including whether employees worked from the office or home, how they commuted to work, and supplier spend) and they were able to calculate evee’s total carbon emissions for 2022 – 57.8tCO2.
Purchasing carbon credits
Once our carbon emissions were successfully measured, the next step was to offset them by purchasing an equal amount of credits. Carbon credits are created through the development of climate projects that help sequester or avoid carbon being released into the atmosphere. To offset our 57tCO2 produced and become a carbon neutral organisation, evee purchased 57 carbon credits, funding projects like the Mytrah clean energy initiative in India, critical swamp protection and restoration in Indonesia, and providing efficient cookstoves in Nepal.
What next?
Now that we know evee’s carbon footprint, we have a clearer understanding of where we can improve and which reduction attempts will have the most impact. Our next step is to develop a strategy to reduce these emissions, in addition to our annual carbon offsetting with Trace. Our long term goal is to become a net-zero organisation, in support of our mission to accelerate towards a clean future.
For more information on our carbon neutral status, visit evee’s public profile on the Trace website.
