South Africa-based Planet42 has become the first mobility company in Africa to receive CarbonNeutral certification under The CarbonNeutral Protocol.
The company helps the underbanked population get access to cars with its socially inclusive car subscription service.
To offset their emissions, Planet42 has chosen to support a wind farm in South Africa’s Northern Cape province near the town of De Aar. The project aims to reduce South Africa’s dependency on coal and other fossil fuels via wind turbines.
Eerik Oja, CEO of Planet42, says: “Few people would argue that becoming carbon neutral is not a sensible goal, but it seems to us that the world is not moving towards this goal fast enough. So instead of introducing a vacuous grand plan of becoming carbon neutral by 2040 or something similarly vague, we decided to act now.”
By financing projects to reduce, avoid or remove greenhouse gas emissions, initiatives like the CarbonNeutral certification play a critical role in accelerating the transition towards net-zero.
The North Cape Wind project comprises 96 turbines with an installed capacity of 144 MW and supplies approximately 440k MWh/year. The generated electricity is fed into the national grid, which is integrated with the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP).
When connecting the wind power farm to a fossil fuel-dominated grid, wind energy replaces energy generated by fossil fuels. By calculating an emission factor that tells how much CO2 is released per kilowatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuels, one can determine the reduction in CO2 emissions delivered by the wind power plant.
Oja concludes: “Our car subscription product has a highly positive social impact as we rent cars to people who otherwise would not have access to safe, reliable transport. But, of course, the emissions produced by our cars result in a limited negative environmental impact. We’re counteracting this impact by investing in carbon offset projects in the markets we operate. To put it another way, the investments we make into carbon neutrality represent a self-imposed tax. We’re leading by example and hope that companies in South Africa and beyond will follow.”