BlaBlaCar: this mechanism which has saved tens of millions of euros for the carpooling giant

“Discreet support endorsed by the State, to the tune of several tens of millions of euros per year.” The French world leader in carpooling BlaBlaCar has benefited since 2012 from an environmental obligation mechanism financed by energy companies, the “CEE”, whose effectiveness in terms of climate benefits has been “overestimated” by the State, said this Saturday, April 6, the newspaper Le Monde. “An opaque income of which BlaBlaCar was the almost exclusive beneficiary for a decade and continues to benefit today,” writes the daily.

Revenue from which BlaBlaCar does not deny having benefited, but the company assures on the other hand that it was not the only one to benefit from the financial windfall. “Until 2023, each carpooling player had its own specialized file (specific CEE operation), us, but also our competitors,” BlaBlaCar defended to AFP.

According to Le Monde, the company has earned comfortable revenues thanks to the Energy Savings Certificates (EEC) mechanism, which, in the name of the polluter pays principle, requires 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. At the time, the oil group offered 20 euro fuel cards to new registrants while paying BlaBlaCar “several dozen euros for each registered driver”, thus generating liquidity for the developing start-up.

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 the daily.

According to the newspaper's calculations, 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.

TotalEnergies, which says it is in partnership with three operators (BlaBlaCar, Moovance, Stadium Go), told AFP that it has 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 the company did not want to confirm, nor the amounts collected since the beginning, even if it indicates “having 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. The Ministry of the Economy does not wish to “make any comment on this particular case” of BlaBlaCar, while emphasizing that Minister Bruno Le Maire “announced that the impact of all CEEs on energy savings will now be more evaluated”.