Cavalry, one of Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital funds takes action against climate change. By analysing and compensating the emissions from their worldwide operations, Cavalry joins the list as one of the first climate neutral VCs, powered by Planetly’s carbon solutions.
Industry: | Finance, Venture Capital |
Location: | Berlin, Germany |
Employees: | 14 |
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72,1 t carbon offset |
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3 Offset portfolio projects |
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300+ Data points analyzed |
“Climate change is the greatest challenge of the 21st century. We want to be part of the solution and not only reduce our own footprint, but also encourage our portfolio and our network to rethink in a sustainable way.”
Footprint
Did you ever wonder, what “calling in the Cavalry” means in terms of CO₂e? We also did, which is why we asked our investor the Cavalry VC to conduct a carbon footprint analysis with us.
Cavalry’s carbon footprint comprises the sum of greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere by all aspects of the company’s operations. While the venture capital provider holds a lot of assets in various companies, the footprint analysis is focussed on Cavalry’s own business activities itself.
Those activities can be summarised by their operation of the office, business travels, employee’s daily commuting and food supply, as well as the emissions of their company car and conducted events. The various types of emissions are calculated in CO₂ equivalents (short: CO2e) to make them addable and comparable.
The biggest emission sources:
Business travel, employee commute
Office electricity & heating
Employee drinks, food, breakfast and dinner
Cavalry’s biggest carbon footprint is caused by its business travels, scouting and visiting potential new investments and existing portfolio companies. The second biggest footprint is left by the operations of their office. Lastly, employees nutrition made up the third biggest part of their footprint. All those activites are brought down to zero for the year 2019, which served as the base year for all calculations.
Cavalry has a strong business sense when it comes to their investments. Furthermore, their aim is to develop an equally strong ecological sense. This is why they were starting the whole process of analysing their footprint. However, their ambitions don’t stop here.
In recent months they have developed new business policies, that aim to reduce their overall footprint. These policies include traveling less by aeroplane, utilizing trains and video conferences instead. Apart from switching to a green energy provider they are also looking into the direction of employing those principles within their portfolio companies.
The VC’s core competence is always to bring added value to its portfolio companies. By adding up on this in ecological terms, Cavalry provides its investments with crucial knowledge in the ever more important area of sustainability.
Cavalry received a broad selection of potential offsetting projects. Eventually, they decided for projects located in Costa Rica, Germany and Peru.
The three projects selected in those countries comprise reforestation, creation of wind power as well as the rewetting of bogs. The latter, a German project that aims to rewet an area of 68 hectares swamp land in the country’s northern part, generates 660 tonnes CO2e savings per year.
The Peruvian project conserves 182,000 hectares of one of the most threatened ecosystems in the tropical, Peruvian Amazon, through forest management and community programmes. Is generates a yearly emission reduction of 515,268 tonnes CO2e.
A third chosen projects provides clean electricity to 50,000 people thereby reducing up to 15,000 tons of CO2e per year.
All projects enjoy the highest verification standards, such as the Voluntary Carbon (VCS) and the Gold Standard. Moreover, the support numerous Sustainable Development Goals, set by the United Nations.
Contact us if you have any questions or if you would like to take the path to carbon neutrality with Planetly yourself!