Sustainability will be the main topic of several events that will take place after summer vacations. As a member of the main organizations oriented to sustainable development, we invite you to follow them:
Caring for Climate / B4E (4, 5 October 2010, Mexico City), convened by the UN Global Compact in cooperation with UNEP and the Mexican government, the event will aim at providing perspectives and policy recommendations ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16) to be held in Cancún, Mexico on December 2010. More information.
What are the links between business and development? And what is the business role and opportunity in addressing sustainability challenges of developing countries and emerging economies? These questions are addressed in a report launched in early July by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
The report draws on a decade of WBCSD thought leadership and practical experience in promoting business solutions to sustainability issues in the developing world.
As an active member of the WBCSD, ACCIONA recommend the reading of this report.
The new wind turbine blade manufacturing facility at Lumbier (Navarra, Spain) was opened yesterday. The plant enhances the company’s presence in the entire wind power value chain. We recommend you to watch this video:
Summer is here again, and so too is ACCIONA’s Energy Savings, Casual Attire and Sustainability Plan, a pioneering initiative in which air conditioning is set to 23-24ºC allowing employees to dress more casually and do away with ties or suits.
These measures contributed 57,500kWh-worth of energy savings, and avoided the emission into the atmosphere of 17.3 metric tons of CO2 at corporate headquarters in Madrid alone last year. But above all, we get to raise awareness of the Company’s sustainability values among staff. What are your thoughts on this plan? Would you be willing to put up with slightly higher room temperatures if it meant saving energy in your office or at home?
ACCIONA has taken on a long-term strategic commitment to protecting the environment. Accordingly, the Company is pledged to a raft of initiatives that includes the following:
- In 2009, we avoided close to 8 million metric tons of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.
- Not only is ACCIONA the first Spanish company to set up a Sustainability Committee, but it did so at boardroom level, demonstrating just how seriously we take our commitment to sustainable development.
- In 2009, the Company was listed for the third year in a row as Sector Leader by the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes.
- We make an active contribution to education through our Sustainability Workshop programme. The Workshop goes into the classroom and shows children and young people the importance of sustainable development
- We are the global renewables operator present in most countries and with the greatest range of clean technologies.
- We head the EU’s MARINA project, leading a 17-strong group of European companies united in a research effort that aims at integrating a range of marine renewable energies.
- We have signed agreements with major technological partners to work together to speed the roll-out of Electric Vehicles.
We are making important progress in a variety of fields. Even so, the very fact that we still have to make a special point of holding a World Environment Day means that there’s still a long way to go.
ACCIONA is committed to sustainability, so we’ve always made every effort to do things “better than the best way”. Not only do we aim to explain what we do through our communication campaigns, but we also set out to make society aware of the change of attitude needed if we are to achieve sustainable development. And since listening is an essential part of communication, we are conducting research to find out which issues worry you most and your opinion on topics such as transparency, environment, workplace health and safety and supply chain, integrity and innovation, all of which have to do with sustainability.
If you’d like to answer our survey(7 questions in all) it will only take you five 5 minutes.
Dealing with sustainability challenges is like dealing with aging, everybody has a special cream that will work for you, hundreds of consultants will come smiling with slimming pills that will reduce your fat environmental impact to something thin as Audrey Hepburn’s waist; thousands of companies are working in the right antioxidants that will make your CO2 wrinkles disappear, governments are expert and try to provide you with waste defoliants, so the skin of your land will look clean as a whistle; but despite all this cosmetics efforts and good will, we are still aging, all of us. Aging into more CO2 wrinkles, slowly in its way of making difficult for us to breath, aging into waste, making us harder to find a place with none of it (name it: Mountains, oceans, rivers and jungles…);aging into a widespread environmental impact that can be seen from the outer space, could continue, aging has soo may details, but we want to mitigate aging. Is it possible that one solution to mitigate aging could be changing our consumption lifestyle, having a healthy lifestyle, if embracing change could be healthy for all of us? Then why everybody is looking for the Miracle Cream? …The search goes on…
Tomorrow, wednesday march the 10th, within the Liason Delegates Meeting of WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development), we will be discussing the relationship between Social Web & Sustainability. You can follow with hashtag: #wbcsd
Member companies of the WBCSD have a clear commitment with Sustainability; But on the other side there is the perception that they are not using the potential of the web 2.0, its capability to reach out to almost any person or business, initiative that could, eventually, contribute to generate a bigger social and politic influence in order to accelerate the process of getting in place the necessary measures to match the Sustainability challenges.
Social web has changed the way we interact with our stakeholders but, are we taking advantage of these tools or are we laggards?
Tomorrrow at 15hrs (Ginebra time). hashtag: #wbcsd
We beleive that each year brings a new change for Re_flection, Re_paration and, above all, the Re_kindling of hopes. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
1. Awareness. We have to make society at large and the business community aware of the long-term benefits of sustainability. How? Through education and information campaigns and the acknowledgement of best practices, all of which will help to foster a business environment that helps generate business opportunities, keeps down the associated risks of sustainable strategies and engages in a two-way dialogue that heightens awareness among employees, clients and shareholders.
2. Incentives for sustainability. To be exact, incentives for making sustainability projects economically worthwhile.That means, for example, preferential trade tariffs, efforts to promote R&D and Innovation and so on and so forth. But, in particular, the situation calls for a carbon market capable of adequately reflecting the social and environmental costs of carbon emissions. Approaching the problem from the point of view profitability will be the best catalyst for the investment needed for turning the commitment to sustainability into solid reality and hard facts.
3. Dissuasive Measures. An institutional and legislative framework with measures aimed at dissuading both the State and the business community from falling short of their commitments.
4. A long-term scenario backed by international financing and consensus and supervised by independent organizations capable of transmitting confidence to private capital.
ACCIONA Energy to receive 10.3 million € from the Canadian government for the company’s fourth wind farm in the country http://bit.ly/d86qte2 weeks ago
