Liberty Costa Rica to build up EV fleet in 2024-27

Telecom operator Liberty Costa Rica, one of Liberty Latin America group’s main subsidiaries, plans to expand its electric vehicle (EV) fleet as part of its sustainability efforts over the next three to four years.

The telco is aiming at replacing between a third and half of its thermal vehicle fleet with EVs between 2024 and 2027, “with various scenarios to reflect the potentially limited availability of certain types of technical vehicles – such as trucks,” it said in its ESG report.

Last year, Liberty Costa Rica partnered with IDB Invest to structure what it claimed to be the largest sustainability-linked bond issuance for the telecommunications sector in Central America.

As part of this issuance, a framework was defined with KPIs and different related sustainability performance targets. These were validated by SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative, an advisory board) in December 2023, according to the company.

At the end of 2022, Liberty Costa Rica said it was on track toward its 2027 target, with 2022 Scope 1 and 2 emissions down by 16% compared with the previous year, which it mainly attributed to “the positive impact of continued decarbonization of Costa Rica’s electricity grid,” it wrote.

The annual ESG report is from 2023 and uses 2022 as reference data.

Among other things, the carrier claims that by investing in fiber-to-the-home deployments it is able “significantly decrease” the power consumption in its network, in addition to delivering greater capability and higher speeds.

Liberty Costa Rica had 2.98 million mobile subscribers, more than 268,000 home internet customers and 204,000 video subscribers, in addition to 55,400 fixed telephony contracts, at end-2022.

The full ESG report can be seen found here.