Sources: aicep Portugal Global

How big is your organization’s carbon footprint? Offset CO2 emissions with GoParity, a Portuguese startup for sustainable investments, developed a tool that allows companies to simulate the carbon dioxide emissions from the transport of orders, the car fleet and air travel of employees or the energy consumption of offices. Once measured, companies can find out how much to invest in sustainability projects to compensate for their carbon footprint. The feature was presented today at the Web Summit, in Lisbon.

“With this new tool, companies committed to sustainability can compensate for their carbon footprint with a bonus that this implies an investment and not a cost for the company. It’s a real and circular impact for the company, the projects invested in and the environment.” explains Nuno Brito Jorge, CEO of GoParity.

GoParity is a platform where positive social and environmental impact projects seek funding and appeal to civil society to invest in the creation and growth of these green businesses. The impact is measured in sustainability metrics so it’s always visible what one has contributed, such as CO2 avoided, planted trees and clean energy generated, and impacted lives.

From the various projects: solar power projects for self-consumption, contributing to the decarbonisation of the economy; reforestation projects, allowing CO2 capture as a result of tree planting; energy efficiency projects that reduce CO2 by reducing consumption. Whenever an investment is made through GoParity, one can monitor its positive impact of CO2 avoided and the percentage of footprint reduced.

“This is another step towards the decarbonisation of the economy. Offsetting the carbon dioxide emitted is an innovative approach and allows companies to invest with return in projects that avoid CO2 emissions, instead of paying.” says Brito Jorge.

In four years, GoParity has already generated more than 9M€ for +125 projects, which were invested by more than 15.5 thousand users, with a return of 4-7% per year, representing more than 2M€ returned to investors. In total, the projects avoided an annual average of 22.000tons of CO2 emissions, and impacted around 60 thousand people through the creation of jobs, better financial living conditions and education.

The new feature was presented at the Web Summit, at Casa do Impacto stand, the innovation and entrepreneurship hub where GoParity is incubated.