‘Low-carbon entrepreneur’: economic development merges with energy transition

Les entrepreneurs bas-carbone à MonacoTech ©Ed Wright

On Friday 17 November the closing event was held of the first low-carbon support programme for Monegasque businesses, an initiative presented and led by the Mission for Energy Transition (MTE) in partnership with the Business Development Agency, the business incubator Monaco Boost and the start-up incubator MonacoTech. The programme was launched in April 2023 for a period of six months, following a survey on training needs among these groups.
21 companies took part in the support programme and received a certificate recording their participation.

The ‘Low-carbon entrepreneur’ project aimed to respond to two clear objectives:

 To demonstrate to participants that becoming a low-carbon business may have a direct impact on their competitiveness;
 To teach them how to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and draw up an action plan to reduce them.

It was organised in 3 joint workshops attended by all, together with work to be done individually by the participating organisations, which were also able to take part in small group coaching sessions.

The project was led by the GIENOV Company, specialist in environmental and digital transitions and expert in businesses carbon strategies. It covered:
 Raising awareness of carbon emissions and global climate and environmental issues, and the risks and opportunities for business of getting involved in the energy transition;
 Understanding GHG emissions data;
 Good practice and targeted themes (responsible digital practice, responsible purchasing, labels and certifications, etc.);
 Responsible communication and subsidies available in Monaco to fund low-carbon actions.

A tool developed in a collaboration between MTE and GIENOV enabled participants to acquire GHG emissions data by calculating the footprint of their activities arising from 3 major emissions sources of the Principality: transport, waste and energy. It also offered them help in optimising and estimating emissions avoided from data supplied (type of transport, packaging, purchases, etc.).

In order to draw up the low-carbon action plan, a second tool enabled them to define, for each of their actions, a person responsible, a timescale to set it up, a monitoring indicator, the GHG reduction objective and the estimated costs.

29 businesses registered, most of them signatories to the National Energy Transition Pact, and 21 completed the whole of the programme*. The two organisations were hosting 44 companies at the time of the launch, giving the programme a very satisfactory validation level of almost 50% of the groups hosted.

Encouraged by this success, the programme, unique in the Principality, is now under active consideration for repeating next year.

* :Alaïs Agency, DT Development, HY-Plug, Maison Marion Latore, MCC Ventures, Monte-Carlo Beer, Mosaique Consulting, Pixels, Polytech Précision Monaco, twenty, Un1ted Fitness, Anima Corpus, Novetech Surgery, Monaco Green Box for Monaco Boost, Coraliotech, Infineis, TriMed’s, Akimba, Spheno Id, InnoDeep, A-Bim for MonacoTech