2024-04-07 06:30:18
The French world leader in carpooling BlaBlaCar has obtained support of “several tens of millions of euros” per year since 2012 thanks to an environmental obligation mechanism financed by energy companies, the “CEE”, whose effectiveness in terms of climate benefits have been “overestimated” by the State, says the newspaper “Le Monde” on Saturday.
“The start-up benefited from discreet support endorsed by the State, to the tune of several tens of millions of euros per year […] an opaque income of which BlaBlaCar was the almost exclusive beneficiary for a decade and continues to benefit today,” writes the daily.
Blablacar partnership with TotalEnergies
According to “Le Monde”, the company has earned comfortable revenues thanks to a mechanism, the Energy Savings Certificates (CEE), which, in the name of the polluter pays principle, require energy suppliers to finance actions promoting energy sobriety and efficiency. It is in this context that TotalEnergies and BlaBlaCar entered into a partnership, starting in 2012.
According to “Le Monde”, at the time, the oil group offered 20 euro fuel cards to new registrants while paying BlaBlaCar “several tens of euros for each registered driver”, thus generating liquidity for the start-up in development.
This assembly, “validated by the Ministry of Ecology” and with “secret” outlines, was part of a “specific CEE operation”, which would have benefited “the only company” Blablacar for years, before that “its rivals Karos and Klaxit (absorbed by BlaBlaCar in 2023)” only obtain “the equivalent a few years later”, to a lesser extent, explains Le Monde.
“Until 2023, each carpooling player had its own specialized file (specific CEE operation), us, but also our competitors,” BlaBlaCar defended.
According to calculations by “Le Monde”, these measures allowed the three platforms to together earn “at least 250 million euros between 2012 and 2021”. Subsequently, in 2023, the government published a standardized CEE sheet for all carpooling players.
At least 100 million in 2023
TotalEnergies, which says it is in partnership with three operators (BlaBlaCar, Moovance, Stadium Go), said it had paid bonuses to nearly 500,000 new drivers in 2023. According to “Le Monde”, BlaBlaCar would have captured “at least 100 million euros” thanks to the EECs last year. A figure that BlaBlaCar did not want to confirm, nor the sums collected since the beginning, even if the company indicates that it “has nothing to hide”.
Beyond the support generated by the EECs for the carpooling sector, the daily calls into question windfall effects for motorists, emphasizing that the calculation of their environmental benefit has been “vastly overestimated” by the State.
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