Comfort Energy takes company-wide responsibility towards climate neutrality

June 24, 2021

Comfort Energy Group (CEG), market leader in Belgium and Luxemburg for liquid fuels and other energy life-cycle products, works with ClimatePartner to offset its CO2 operational emissions of its 180 ADR tanker fleet – around 3,670,000 kg of CO2. It is a further step in CEGs corporate climate action plan towards a full climate neutral product offering and company-wide emission reduction.

Today, an average of approximately 30 percent of Belgians, or 1.6 million households, still uses fossil oil as its main heating source. In Germany this is around 20 percent of households on average, with a percentage of as high as 40 percent in some regions.  As long as renewable energy is not affordable and accessible to all households, fossil derived fuels will remain a necessary energy source in the energy mix.

Compensate, Reduce and Eliminate

As Belux market leader, Comfort Energy has the ambition to contribute to the planet’s energy transition across the full energy life cycle of its customers. That is why Comfort Energy will assist its customers in this transition by offering a gradual path to a more sustainable energy future by using its 3-step approach, “Compensate, Reduce and Eliminate”.

With the support of ClimatePartner, Comfort Energy Group can now offer its customers emissions-compensated climate neutral energy products. Or simply put: CO2 emissions resulting from the use of heating products are compensated by international projects that reduce a similar amount of CO2 elsewhere.  Via testing, CEG wants to prove that existing boilers perform just as well using biofuels as when using fuel oil. By using 33 percent biofuels (R33), CO2 emissions will immediately be reduced with at least 25 percent compared to conventional fuel oil. A heating system that only uses biofuels will eliminate 80 percent of the CO2 emissions compared to the use of fossil fuels. CEG is looking at other energy life Cccle products, which would allow for complete elimination of CO2 emissions.

The collaboration with ClimatePartner is the result of a pilot, which started in July 2020, whereby CEG could offer its customers a tailored off-setting energy product through ClimatePartner’s unique and easy-to-use software-as-a-service climate action platform, enabling client-specific offsetting based on respective ID tracking codes. Since this pilot, Comfort Energy´s customers can compensate their consumption of liquid fuel under CEG’s Green+ program, which already resulted in a compensation of 8 million litres of gasoil in this short period.

To further strengthen its corporate responsibility, Comfort Energy Group decided to offset the emissions of its own full operational fleet of 180 ADR trucks, which make nearly 400,000 deliveries per year and use 1.2 million litres of liquid fuel. Meaning that 3,670,000 kg of CO2, or the equivalent of the CO2 captured by 153,000 trees, will be compensated. By doing this, Comfort Energy will be the first energy provider in Belgium to deliver its liquid fuels to households and professional partners in a climate neutral way.

To complement the offset measures of both its products and its own truck fleet, Comfort Energy took the following steps to reduce and avoid emissions:

  • Renewal of their operational truck fleet to the most recent Euro norm with lower emissions;
  • Driving trainings to lower fuel consumption while driving;
  • Offering Green+ (CO2 compensated) heating oil to all company employees;
  • Switching the company´s facilities to renewable energy;
  • Installation of solar panels on the Eke and Geel facilities (Eke 45 kWp, Geel 14 kWp), resulting in a CO2 ­ reduction of 23,000 kg annually;
  • Conducting tree planting programs in Africa under the Move2Improve initiative for our employees.

This announcement follows earlier communications whereby Comfort Energy Group announced a transformation of its core liquid fuel offering from fossil based to gradual biofuels for all its customers. Biofuel producers are transforming their processes from virgin biobased feedstocks (competing over land used for food) to recycled feedstocks, such as Used Cooking Oil (UCO) and recycled plastic, which have a reduced impact on land usage, reduce further impact on emissions and promote a circular approach.

More information is also available here.