The company Getlink is better known under its former name: Eurotunnel. It operates the Channel Tunnel, where Eurostar passes, shuttles that transport cars and trucks to the United Kingdom or France and freight trains. It also has a rail freight activity, a rail trade training school and, recently, two high-voltage cables protected by the tunnel, which transport enough to supply electricity to a city of 1.5 million inhabitants.
Its managing director, Yann Leriche, is faced with a difficult equation: “Take two cars crossing the English Channel. The one on board our shuttle emits the equivalent of 1 kg of CO2, the one with the ferry, 73 times more. In total, this is 74 kg. If both take the ferry, the balance sheet is 146 kg. If both go through the tunnel, it reduces the carbon footprint to 2 kg. But it doubles that of Getlink. As our emissions increase, this may weigh on our extra-financial rating. It is not logical. »
But that’s not the only problem. The extra-financial ratings, notes the polytechnician, are not always consistent with each other. However, they influence the cost of capital of the company, because investors grant them more and more importance. The boss of Getlink is looking for a better instrument to report on his carbon footprint and compare himself more easily.
With this objective in mind, at the beginning of 2021 he approached the Toulouse School of Economics, founded by the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, Jean Tirole, and, in particular, the economist Christian Gollier, who participated in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They created a chair devoted to the analysis of the determinants of energy efficiency in companies. Above all, they have developed an accounting indicator: the carbon-free margin.
197 euros per ton
The principle is simple: as part of the European Green Deal, more and more sectors will have to buy carbon quotas. This is already the case for electricity producers or highly polluting industries (steel, glass, paper, etc.) and soon for maritime transport (between 2024 and 2026) or road transport (2028). Getlink proposes to anticipate this accounting principle.
The Toulouse School of Economics advised him to retain a carbon price of 197 euros per ton, the one recommended by the American Environmental Protection Agency. Getlink estimates the emissions of each of its activities, calculates their financial equivalent and deducts it from its operating margin. For 2022, this amounted to 886 million euros, but falls to 857 million euros once “carbon-free”. For a service company that mainly uses electricity of nuclear origin, the impact is therefore quite limited (it should however increase for 2023, due to the shutdowns of power plants in France). But this method would plunge many other companies into the red.
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