CLOSE

Historic Motoring Events company Carbon Neutral for 2020

Makes good on commitment to go green from Jan 2019 – Footprinting and high-quality offset strategy

The world’s premiere historic motoring events company, HERO-ERA, has partnered exclusively with decarbonisation specialists BeZero Carbon to become net carbon neutral for 2020, under its new initiative NET-HERO.

This milestone deliverable makes good on its 2019 commitment to ensure all sources of emissions from its activities are 100% offset.

HERO-ERA’s 2020 carbon footprint was calculated at 424 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. 4% from operating activities and 96% from rally activities, including rallies in New Zealand and the UK.

The initiative uses a pioneering approach to carbon footprint rallies via a proprietary model that includes the full carbon impact of international and domestic historic motoring events. The model factors in all sources of potential greenhouse gas activities, including vehicle fuel consumption, transport, energy, shipping, air travel and accommodation.

The inclusion and publication of all sources of emissions reflects HERO-ERA’s commitment to driving standards for accountability and climate action in motoring.

HERO-ERA used BeZero’s innovative carbon credit framework to 100% offset their 2020 emissions. BeZero Credits are optimised via a proprietary Ratings methodology for carbon offset credits.

The framework combines scientific analysis of offset projects with modern portfolio theory to enhance accuracy and provide diversification benefits. The aim is to offset a “true tonne” of carbon for every credit purchased. All credits purchased as part of this basket were certified by the UN Clean Development Mechanism, VCS, and the UK Woodland Carbon Code.

HERO-ERA is committed to using this footprinting and offsetting approach to ensure all future rallies and operations are carbon neutral moving forward, reinforcing its role as a leader in countering the environmental impact of the industry.

HERO-ERA in exclusive partnership with BeZero will be launching NET-HERO in the coming months, a dedicated platform giving historic and classic car enthusiasts and the wider motoring community the opportunity to measure, engage, and offset their footprint. HERO-ERA are working with other historic vehicle industry leaders to help ensure that the sector plays its part in countering environmental challenges, but in parallel it is also working to protect and nurture the heritage and jobs in what is a growth market sector as recently discovered in the HERO-ERA commissioned Cebr ‘Economic and Environmental Impact Study of the Historic and Classic Industry in the UK’. It discovered a surprisingly large industry that turns over £18.3 billion employing 113,000 people, a sector twice the size of the Scotch whisky industry and the same size as all the UK Ports business.

Please see the link to the illuminating Impact Study below (63 pages) to enable you to download your free copy.

A full copy of the Impact Study report is available here, or alternatively a headline news release here

Cebr, the Centre for Economics and Business Research also established that through the historic motoring industry impact study, low emissions were already prevalent in the sector for three main reasons;
– Spending on historic and classic vehicles has a high labour and conservation content with a low energy and materials content.
– The philosophy of repair rather than build new means the industry focuses on reuse rather than building from scratch.
– Classic and historic vehicles are at least as much for show as go, typically they have very low levels of usage.
The average £1000 spent on owning historic and classic cars creates 80kg of CO2 equivalent emissions taking all inputs into account. This compares with 537 kg of CO2 emissions that would result from an average £1000 of consumer expenditure measured the same way.

Whilst the historic vehicle industry’s emissions are negligible in comparison to for example; mobile phone use, European flights or regular modern ICE car driving, there is still work to be done to ensure this sector is totally net zero carbon as per NET-HERO’s programme aim. Tomas de Vargas Machuca, the Chairman of HERO-ERA and driving force behind NETHERO explained; “We are committed to protecting our motoring and engineering heritage, a precious industry enjoyed by many. To ensure we do so effectively we must protect our environment as well. The carbon footprint generated by the classic car industry is negligible compared to other smaller industries but regardless, we want to play our part proactively. Our Net-Hero initiative will allow classic car enthusiasts and the wider industry to offset their emissions just as we have. We will continue to be a net zero emissions industry leader going forward.”

HERO-ERA is a carbon neutral company.

2020 carbon footprint collated & offset by BeZero Carbon Ltd in an exclusive agreement with HERO-ERA.