Our Corporate Carbon Footprint

Sustainability and future-oriented action is a key strategy for Irro for the company's development in the coming years. As a transportation and travel company, we are inevitably in the middle of the climate debate. We maintain more than 150 vehicles in our fleet, almost all of which run on diesel and require space.

However, sustainable development is always multi-dimensional. The bus itself has a significantly better carbon footprint than the car, simply because more people can travel together. When considering daily commuter and school traffic, the bus can replace countless cars as a means of transport. A bus holiday is more climate-friendly than traveling by plane.

Our measures in recent years have been diverse: from installing a comprehensive photovoltaic system to the first electric taxi. But what exactly does the company's CO2 emissions look like as a whole? How does it develop? And what is the ecological footprint that we cause as a company?

With our first Corporate Carbon Footprint, we lay the foundation for an annual and regular analysis of the company's carbon footprint. Together with Climate Partner, we conducted this analysis for the first time for the year 2020 and have now completed it.

What is actually the carbon footprint?
The carbon dioxide footprint ("Carbon Footprint") describes a company's total carbon dioxide emissions. This is differentiated into direct and indirect emissions. Direct emissions (Scope 1) are in our example, the emissions directly caused by our own vehicles. We are also responsible for indirect carbon dioxide emissions (Scope 2 + 3) due to purchased energy carriers, such as heat or electricity. The basis for calculating the footprint is always the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol). All calculations are based on this standard.

A carbon footprint can also be measured for each individual person. The average carbon footprint per person in Germany is 10.8 tons of carbon dioxide. (Source: BMUV, 2023)

What is Irro's carbon footprint?
In 2020, we emitted a total of 2,507.4 tons of carbon dioxide. The majority, 1.7 tons of CO2, is attributed to direct emissions (Scope 1), which are largely accounted for by our fleet. The second largest item is the upstream emissions (indirect, Scope 2) that are incurred for purchased energy. Smaller contributions from capital goods, water, employee commuting, business travel, or upstream emissions from purchased transport services (e.g. charter) are added.

Comparability
To put the values in perspective, it is worth looking beyond the horizon. First of all, the company's carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 are roughly equivalent to the annual consumption of about 232 adult people in Germany. Now 2020 was a year with significantly lower travel activities due to the COVID 19 pandemic, and therefore the values are not directly comparable with previous years.

We have therefore developed another ratio value for Irro: Carbon dioxide emissions per driven kilometer (all vehicles in the fleet). This value is 0.011t (or 11.14kg). With this value, we will be able to compare the ratio to emissions in the coming years regardless of whether more or fewer kilometers are driven.

It is important to emphasize that as the company grows, emissions will also increase. To mitigate these emissions, we have implemented the following measures in 2021 and 2022:

Our measures
* In early 2022, we added the first electric vehicle, the fully electric VW ID.4 taxi, to the fleet. The corresponding wallbox is located in close proximity to the other taxi vehicles. The vehicle must be charged every night and can reach around 500-600km of mileage per day in summer and around 350km in winter. * The entire administrative building at Roland-Brandin-Straße 2 is equipped with a photovoltaic system. The generated energy roughly corresponds to the amount of electricity used by the entire operating yard. We can store the generated energy for a short time in a storage unit. * The water used in our new bus washing facility is reused 81% of the time. The entire washing facility and the 8 apartments above it are powered 100% by photovoltaic panels on the roof of the building. * In 2021, we switched to green electricity.

So far, this report is relatively unique for the year 2020. We will now quickly balance the years 2021 and 2022 to better show the development and comparability of the measures.

The complete Corporate Carbon Footprint of Irro can be viewed directly here.