By Equipe de Redação
Posted in December 23, 2022
The wide adherence of the corporate segment to ESG guidelines, especially large and publicly traded companies, has brought to light a series of opportunities for companies that offer products and services capable of supporting and implementing the best Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance practices.
This is the case of Ambipar, a Brazilian multinational founded in 1995, which went public in 2020 and is currently present in 39 countries. The company operates in two major business verticals: Response, offering solutions for preventing environmental accidents and responding to emergencies; and Environment, where it operates with products and services for waste management and carbon credits.
This last vertical has become a big bet for the group, particularly at a time when the climate emergency is no longer a topic restricted to environmentalists and academic circles and is becoming a daily matter for businessmen and investors, with principles of the Circular Economy and of the Regenerative Economy gaining space.
It was from the realization that there is a gigantic avenue to grow in this vein that Ambify was born in December of last year. One of the companies in the vertical Environment, Ambify initially took shape in an application.
personal carbon footprint
In it, the user can calculate his carbon footprint, that is, the total emissions of greenhouse gases that he emits in his daily habits. The application also allows you to offset this emission in a very simple way. The objective is to provide individuals with access to operations and, thus, feel encouraged to actively collaborate with good practices for the planet.
To make things easier, the platform offers a fragmented carbon credit per kilo, which, in practice, means spending just a few cents to offset the carbon emitted during a meal, for example. One ton of carbon dioxide equals one credit.
The operation is carried out using a token and settled using blockchain technology, which brings security and transparency to the business, in addition to publicly registering the carbon credit used, preventing the same credit from being sold again.
The great news of the Ambify app is that it takes care of the entire operation, tying together its various ends. In this way, the platform user starts by calculating his carbon footprint, pays the amount equivalent to the emission and, subsequently, the business is certified by Verra, which validates more than 70% of the global voluntary market of carbon credits. All this is only possible because, due to the nature of its activities, Ambipar is considered a genuine generator of carbon credits.
To make sense from the point of view of the various aspects covered by ESG practices, with each transaction, 5% of the amount is allocated to Ambify partner institutions, such as the NGO Doctors without Borders. This percentage comes directly from the company’s cash, not from the customer’s pocket.
Since August, the Ambipar token – which was already traded on the BitPreço, BitcoinToYou and Bitrecife platforms – has also been available to clients of Foxbit cryptocurrency brokerage. Ambify does not reveal numbers or data related to the application or the volume of negotiations already carried out on the market.
an ambitious embryo
Although so far it only offers functionality related to offsetting carbon credits, Ambify has many ambitions for the product in the medium term. The objective is for this embryo to develop and offer, in the near future, products and services to supply the market with solutions that unite two booming movements in the country: tokenization and the voluntary carbon credit market.
“There is a world to be explored. The sky is the limit when it comes to disruptive green technologies”, says João Valente, Director of Digital Assets at Ambipar, who was at the head of the multidisciplinary team that idealized and took Ambify off the ground, with specialists from areas as diverse as blockchain, carbon market, developers, programmers and designers.
Already present in part of the financial and payment transactions carried out in Brazil, tokenization is nothing more than a process of replacing real data with others protected by cryptography.
In this sense, the executive explains that, at the moment, solutions for regenerative finance, using tools such as NFTs and Metaverso, are the main fronts to be worked on.
“We have on our radar some prototypes of green blockchains being tested. These are projects that will bring something new to the world and society, not least because of the emergence that the theme raises”, he comments.
Ambify believes that two factors can represent competitive differentials against the competition. The first is the company’s pioneering spirit in the development of these solutions.
Another advantage is the profile of Ambipar, its parent company. The company has become one of the biggest buyers of companies among those listed on the Brazilian stock exchange, the B3. Since it went public in July 2020, when it raised just over BRL 1 billion, it has participated in more than 40 mergers and acquisitions. With this, it hopes that the synergies captured in these operations can generate more efficiency, enabling new products and services to be offered to customers before their competitors.
The promising carbon credit market
If there is a huge path to be followed in terms of corporate finance, with many opportunities in assets with potential for tokenization, the same happens with the voluntary market for carbon credits.
A recent study by the consultancy McKinsey points out that Brazil can be a protagonist on this front, with around 15% of the segment in the world. Portion equivalent to about R$ 10 billion over a decade.
There are several ways to earn money from carbon credits. One of them is protecting or reforesting green areas. Avoiding the emission of greenhouse gases is another way.
The biggest stimulus to the development of the carbon market, in Brazil and in the world, is the fulfillment of the global goal, established by the Paris Agreement, in 2015, according to which the temperature of the planet must increase, at most, 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 compared to the pre-industrial era.
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