CO2 Neutrality at Transsolar

Climate change is a very important topic at Transsolar, with CO2 emissions being a core focus. In our projects, we aim for sustainability, developing strategies that enable buildings to operate in a climate-neutral manner or to mitigate the CO2 debt through energy production.

We are aware that our offices and activities generate CO2 emissions, with business travel including flights, employee commuting, electricity, heating, and more. The staff agreed it is time to act now, took initiative, and decided to offset our CO2 emissions.

A task force lead by Tommaso Bitossi and Monika Lauster has volunteered and divided the responsibilities to explore “accountability and reduction” (Christine von Raven, Fabian Jaugstetter, Francisco Gallardo, Jasmin Gärtner, Pamela Cabrera) and “related to compensation” (Isabela Tavares, Markus Krauß, Martin Gut, Max Bauer, Thomas Slater).

The first step was to accurately measure the resulting emissions on an annual basis, considering possible uncertainties in the calculations in advance, allowing us to act purposefully with the knowledge gained and to capitalize on potential savings. We concluded that our main contributors are business travel, followed by commuting, and lastly electricity and heating consumption.

To address this, we have established a flight policy that set a recommended maximum corporate budget of 105 tons of CO2eq per year (50% less than 2019). In the near term, monitoring the electricity and heating consumption of our offices is planned, alongside the corresponding optimization of operations and guidelines for further emission reductions, from sourcing local food to CO2-light IT equipment.

The second step was to compensate for these emissions. We agreed on a portfolio based on technological compensation in line with our core competencies. The first approach envisioned offsetting 100% of our CO2 emissions through a virtual Power Purchase Agreement (vPPA). The intent was to purchase around 400 MWh/year of renewable electricity to sell back to the grid while retaining its environmental attributes.
Unfortunately, our aggregated vPPA cannot be implemented yet, because our PV contractor is still searching for additional buyers for the available projects. We had to put this plan on hold.

However, we decided not to wait longer, and to begin compensating our 2023 emissions. We agreed on a temporary plan B involving 2 key emerging start-ups: WattCarbon (technological compensation) and Treeo (biological compensation):

  • with WattCarbon we are funding now solar projects through Solar Holler to help decarbonize America’s coal country. With that we are eliminating over 200 tons of carbon emissions in 2024.

  • with Treeo, we are funding the plantation of fast-growing trees (Nile Tulip, Mango, Umbrella Tree, Melia, Avocado, Neem Tree) in Uganda. In the next 10 years, after having absorbed 200 tons of CO2, these trees will be harvested and used for local constructions. For this reason, we are also investing in exploring, together with the Treeo research team, a process to be certain that these trees will be used for new timber and local construction as a carbon sink.

Our plan B resulted in a blended price of 150 EUR/TonCO2eq to offset our 2023 emissions. We still plan on retrieving our plan A and offsetting CO2 emissions through a virtual Power Purchase Agreement (vPPA) in the future.