1 April 2022

Track & offset your trip's carbon footprint

At the end of each rental, we'll give you the opportunity to offset your carbon.

Written by Karim Kaddoura

When you drive a Virtuo, instead of owning a car, you're freeing up space in your city, you are putting limited resources to more efficient use, thus reducing the per-driver environmental impact. But driving still emits carbon... so here is what we are doing about it:

A key step in our path towards Net Zero

Since 2021 we've committed to a Net-Zero plan to remove as much carbon as we possibly can from our product, especially by accelerating our transition to a fully electrified fleet. In the meantime, what we can’t reduce ourselves, we raise awareness with our clients and together work to offset through certified and traceable clean energy projects in Europe.

working together to offset your trips carbon footprint by supporting local carbon reduction projects in Europe.

What is carbon offsetting and why are we doing it?

Imagine the Earth is a giant bathtub, the water level represents carbon level in the atmosphere. The tap is the greenhouse gases that are emitted and the drain is things that remove carbon such as trees. Today the water is on the verge of spilling over and we have two options to prevent it from doing so. One is to turn the tap off and the second is to widen the drain, realistically we need to do a bit of both. At Virtuo, fully turning the tap off is going to take time. But, in the short term, we can help others remove their carbon and their contribution to the bathtub water level. This is the principle of carbon offsetting.

So how does it works exactly?

1. Compute your footprint: thanks to our real-time mileage data, we are able to compute how much carbon you've generated.

2. Choose your offset: pick your favorite green energy project in Europe generating an immediate and equivalent amount of carbon savings

3. Send your contribution: on top of carbon credits, a portion of your investment will also go into financing new carbon reduction projects.

Real projects, real people, real impact. Carbon reduction initiatives you can visit yourself.

All the projects that are being supported by our offsetting initiative are real, running and you can even drive to them on a trip with Virtuo. Our only request if you want to visit them is to choose an EV to get there! Here they are:

Support a Solar farm and save the bees

The Verrerie de Néoules includes one of France's largest solar farms, which can provide clean energy to 6,289 homes each year, as well as supporting a large beehive.

Replacing coal with biomass in Glasgow

Helping local tourism partners to heat their facilities with biomass boilers instead of biomass boilers instead of conventional coal boilers.

Planting solar panels on a mining site in the l'Hérault

You will give new life to a former coal mine in the south of France by cleaning up the soil and creating a solar farm.

Supporting solar-powered organic fisheries at the Bellegarde-Broussan Farm

Thanks to the unique Agrienergie® technology, Marc Portier's farm grows fully organic peaches

FAQs

"Carbon neutrality”, what does it mean?: Carbon neutrality is the balance between the greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the company and their removal from the atmosphere. In order to achieve carbon neutrality,
companies often utilise the mechanism of carbon compensation: counterbalancing their own
CO2 emissions by funding projects for the reduction of greenhouse gases.
"Net Zero emissions", what does it mean?: The “net zero emissions” objective involves reducing as much as possible the quantities of
greenhouse gases emitted as a result of your business.
Which models of electric car can I drive with de Virtuo?: You can drive Tesla Model Y or Tesla Model 3, for pick-up in Paris and London. We
don’t plan on stopping there.
In which cities are Virtuo electric cars available?: For the time being, our electric cars are available in Paris and London, however, watch this space!