OUR COMMITMENT TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Being a member of 1% For The Planet and a certified B Corporation keeps us on track in walking our talk and being our best. We work with Leaf, a climatech company providing a powerful SaaS to manage our climate strategy to reduce our emissions, keep them in check and offset what we emit. As we grow our goal is to be 100% solarized. And we’d love to get into regenerative agriculture. Although we built Vista Caballo sustainably we are committed to staying sustainable, growing regeneratively and doing whatever we can do to help with climate change. Our greatest impact is the cumulative effect of equipping mission-driven companies, or those who want to become mission-driven, with the knowledge, tools and and leadership skills needed to achieve their missions in an accelerated time frame. Business leaders have a major role to play in consciousness. Businesses can close the gap in healing the harm we have inflicted on each other and nature.
Vista Caballo is committed to mitigating climate change starting with our personal footprint. The United Nations has 17 sustainable development goals which includes climate action. By generating our own energy with solar panels we are avoiding 6 TONS of C02 emissions annually. For those emissions that were emitted, this year we purchased CERs (*) from the Chacayes Hydroelectric Project in Chile. Chacayes run of river hydro project is a 111 MW power plant located in the Cachapoal Valley, Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins Region, Chile. Operating since 2011, it has been playing an important role in helping to meet the country’s increasing demand for electricity, reducing CO2 emissions and contributing to its economic growth and to the sustainable development of the local communities.
Due to the wide variety of measures undertaken and the innovative environmental initiatives implemented during construction of the Chacayes plant to minimize environmental impacts, Chacayes received, among others, the “Hydro Project of the Year Award” by the organizers of the POWER-GEN International and Renewable Energy World North America events, and the “Environmental Initiative of the Year” Award at the International Tunnelling Awards 2011 in Hong Kong, hosted by the UK’s New Civil Engineer and Ground Engineering magazines.
Pacific Hydro´s corporate community plan, engages with localities during construction and operation of our hydro power stations in the region. Local communities also benefit from our sustainable communities fund “Creciendo Juntos” (Growing Together), which aims to improve their quality life of the population. Since its creation, Creciendo Juntos has delivered more than 1 million dollars to the communities of the Alto Cachapoal Valley.
Hydro projects generate electricity from flowing water. They reduce the need to burn fossil fuels to generate our power. Project benefits: preserving natural resources; promoting renewable energy generation; reducing dependency on non-renewable resources; helping spread green technology worldwide; and improving health.
We are passionate about reducing our footprint.
(*)CERs (certified emission reductions) are carbon credits issued by UNFCCC (United Framework Convention on Climate Change) by implementing projects in developing countries that have followed strict rules (methodologies approved by UNFCCC) also verified by a third party (accredited by UNFCCC), named CDM (Clean Development Mechanism). This strict process provides credibility to offsetting those emissions that, by the time being, have not been able to be avoided by your personal or organization´s activities. Buying CERs rewards projects in developing countries for having implemented emission reduction initiatives and promotes forthcoming ones.