A partnership between Mexican electric car provider VEMO and U.S. car-hailing platform Uber was announced on Tuesday to boost the number of electric vehicles in the platform's Mexico City fleet this year.

According to a statement published by Uber, the first phase of the pilot plan will add 250 electric vehicles to the app, and it will be completed in the first quarter, Reuters reported.

VEMO's general director Roberto Rocha said adding those cars instead of petrol vehicles will save an average of 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, which is equivalent to planting 250,000 trees.

Uber noted that it aims to become a zero-emission platform globally by 2040, the same year that the Mexican government expects all of its marketed vehicles to be electric.

Last year, the American car-hailing app began offering Mexican customers an "Uber Planet" option.

For an additional 0.37 Mexican pesos (US$0.0179) per kilometer, they can contribute towards the purchase of carbon credits for reforestation projects and a wind farm in Oaxaca to offset the emissions caused by their rides.

Uber Welcomes Carbon Offsets in Latin America

When countries and companies find it difficult or expensive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they sometimes use offsets to accomplish climate goals. Reuters reported that these allow buyers to keep polluting while paying someone else to take climate-friendly action.

According to Uber's own climate report from last year, the company avoided buying offsets as a key strategy, focusing instead on subsidies for its drivers to move to electric vehicles (EVs).

Due to the parts of Latin America's slow nascent EV market, the company noted that it is employing the "Uber Planet" offer scheme alongside attempts to encourage drivers to switch to electric vehicles in countries: Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica.

The decision highlights the challenges that transport companies face when attempting to minimize their carbon footprints in emerging markets with relatively few sustainable alternatives.

Power, electric, and hybrid vehicles account for only 6.4 percent of the Mexican car market, compared to 15 percent globally, according to J.D. Power, a data analytics firm.

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Does Uber Planet Make A Difference?

Uber Planet buys credits in projects that have been certified by organizations such as the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The purpose of certification is to ensure that projects are truly providing offsets.

According to Carbon Market Watch's policy officer Gilles Dufrasne, one Mexican scheme supported by Uber named the Oaxaca IV wind farm project could have gone ahead without the credits.

The certification documents from 2011, reviewed by Reuters, showed carbon credits would generate about only one percentage point increase in the project's internal rate of return.

Dufrasne believes the small benefit raises the question of whether they are necessary. Dufrasne explained that the whole point of selling carbon credits is to have some means of measuring extra (emissions) reductions which would not have happened without the sale of the credits.

"If they were going to build the project anyway, then what you're paying now is just not making any difference," said Dufrasne.

The project was vetted under the UNFCCC's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), said a spokesperson for Spain's Acciona, the parent company of Oaxaca IV.

The spokesperson noted that the fact that the U.N. included the Oaxaca IV project under the CDM mechanism was "in itself proof of the contribution of the wind farm to the U.N.'s sustainable development goals."

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This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

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