The passenger transport company Andbus has promoted the first project to be integrated into the national carbon offset market created by Andorra a year ago.
The director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change, Carles Miquel, stressed at the press conference to present the project that the market is going through a «sweet» moment thanks to an increase in supply and demand.
The carbon credit market allows, on the one hand, companies such as Andbus to offer these credits to finance projects that seek sustainability and, on the other hand, other companies, institutions or individuals to buy them to offset their emissions.
Andbus has managed to reduce its CO2 emissions by 12 percent in two years and is now putting 134 carbon credits on the market at a price of 40 euros per credit, corresponding to the 134 tons of CO2 it has saved so that other companies, institutions or individuals can purchase them.
In addition, it was the first carbon neutral passenger transport company in the country and for this reason it designed a plan to renew its fleet and redefine its routes.
It withdrew 19 polluting vehicles from circulation and replaced them with ten less polluting ones, while allocating the most efficient ones to cover the longest routes.
The set of actions has allowed it to reduce CO2 emissions by 12 percent, from 483 grams per kilometer in 2019 to 420 grams per kilometer in 2020, and now it has decided to go a step further and join the national emissions compensation market.
The CEO of Andbus, Daniel Vinseiro, has admitted that for now it is a «relatively modest» and «testimonial» project because the 134 credits will only mean an income of 5,300 euros for the company, a small amount if the price of the vehicles is taken into account.
But from his point of view, the most important thing is that it can be a start to do other things with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality.
In fact, as they revealed at the press conference, the first purchase of carbon credits has already taken place, made by the Government to offset the emissions that involved the trip of the Vice-President of the European Commission, Maro Sefcovic, and his entire team to the Principality, consisting of the purchase of six credits at a cost of 40 euros each.
Carles Miquel recalled that the carbon credit market can be accessed through the platform created by the Government, which puts companies in contact with each other so that they can then validate the transaction.
According to the director of the Energy and Climate Change Office, both the public and commercial sectors are interested in offering credits and the demand comes from entities in different fields such as tourism.
