United Nations Global Compact (UNGC)
Atlantica is a signatory to the UNGC, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative with more than 20,000 signatories in over 160 countries. The UNGC is an initiative that encourages companies and organisations worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies. Participation in the UNGC is voluntary and those entities that sign it pledge to uphold and promote the principles and report on their progress once they apply them in their management.
Atlantica formally adopted the ten fundamental UNGC principles in the fields of human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption and made the UNGC and its principles an integral part of our strategy, culture, and day-to-day operations.
Atlantica is committed to aligning its actions to 7 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): climate action; affordable and clean energy; clean water and sanitation; decent work and economic growth; gender equality; life on land; and industry, innovation, and infrastructure.
We are committed to using water efficiently in our power generation and water desalination activities. We have set a new plan to reduce our water consumption at our generating assets that use cycled water in the turbine circuit and in refrigeration processes. - We have set a target to reduce our water consumption per unit of energy generated (KWh) by 50% by 2035, from a 2020 base year which was approved by the Board of Directors. We invest in three water desalination plants that generate drinking water for local communities and industries through the desalination of sea water. In 2022, these assets generated purified seawater to meet the water needs of approximately 3 million people in regions with limited access to fresh water. The three water desalination assets celebrated the World Water Day to raise awareness among local communities on the importance of sustainable water management.
The renewable energy industry has grown significantly in recent years and it is expected to continue to grow in the coming decades. This requires significant new investments in, among others, storage for dispatchability to support additional wind and solar energy generation. In 2022, our renewable sector accounted for 75% of our revenue, with solar energy representing 64%. We intend to continue to invest in additional clean energy assets to help increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. Our main renewable energy and storage investments during 2022 include: - A 3.6 MW solar PV portfolio in Italy. - A 73 MW solar PV asset in Chile through a renewable energy platform where we own approximately a 35% stake and have a strategic investor role. We expect to add a battery system of approximately 100 MWh in 2023-2024. - A 100 MWh (4 hours) capacity battery storage in California. Commercial Operations Date (COD) is expected in 2024. - A 49% interest in an 80 MW solar PV portfolio in Chile currently starting construction. COD is expected to be progressive in 2023 and 2024. - 30 MW solar PV projects under construction in Colombia. COD is expected in 2023. - Lastly, our 3 solar PV assets under-construction in Uruguay and Colombia finished construction and reached or are about to reach COD, increasing our renewable energy capacity by 40 MW.
We protect labour rights and are committed to promoting safe and secure working environments for all workers. We are committed to providing decent work for all women and men, young people and persons with disabilities and equal pay for work of equal value. We have always prioritised the health and safety of all our employees, contractors and partners working at our premises. Our key health and safety indicators met 2022 targets and remained below the sector average in all our geographies. We have internal policies and procedures to support and ensure human rights, including the Human Rights Policy, the Code of Conduct and the Supplier Code of Conduct (available on our website). Our internal compliance team annually: (i) monitors human rights are internally respected, (ii) provides human rights related training to our employees, and (iii) assesses the supply chain across the jurisdictions in which we operate to identify any potential breach regarding human rights. In May 2022, the Board amended and approved our “U.K. Anti-Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statements” under the Modern Slavery Act, 2015 (available on our website). No human rights incidents were reported or identified during 2022. We are committed to supporting long-term development of the communities where we operate as part of our culture at Atlantica. It is key for us to be a proactive and valued member of our communities and to foster communities’ economic prosperity. In addition, we support local economic growth by choosing to buy from local businesses. In 2022, more than 90% of our total purchases in the geographies where we have assets were made to local suppliers. As of December 31, 2022, Atlantica offered over 150 different training programmes to its employees. In 2022, employees completed an average of 29 hours of training.
Our activity has a positive impact on mitigating climate change. We are committed to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by investing in renewable energy assets. We have a GHG reduction objective approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Atlantica targets to reduce Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions per kWh of energy generated by 70% by 2035 from a 2020 base year1. In addition, we have a goal to maintain over 80% of our adjusted EBITDA generated from low carbon footprint assets including renewable energy, storage, transmission infrastructure and water assets. Following our long-term commitment to sustainability, we have set a new ambitious plan to reduce: 1. Our GHG emissions. We target to: (i) reduce Scope 3 GHG emissions per kWh of energy generated by 70% by 2035 from a 2020 base year, and (ii) achieving Net Zero GHG emissions by 2040. 2. Our non-GHG emissions. We target to reduce our non-GHG emissions per kWh of energy generated by 50% by 2035 from a 2020 base year. In 2022, we helped avoid up to 6.9 million tonnes of equivalent CO2 compared to a 100% fossil fuel-based generation plant (vs. 5.9 million tonnes of equivalent CO2 in 2021).
We promote equal opportunities for our employees and stakeholders. Atlantica stands for greater equality for women. We work to ensure that men and women are treated equally and have the same work opportunities. We analyse gender pay gap, for the year ended December 31, 2022 the total overall pay gap was 13%. Women represent 22% of Atlantica’s Board of Directors. As part of Atlantica's continuing commitment to gender equality, in January 2023 we were included for the 3rd consecutive year in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality (GEI) Index. We are one of 485 companies committed to nurturing an equal and inclusive culture in the workplace.
We work to protect flora and fauna in and around our assets and have a “no net loss” commitment on biodiversity conservation in the areas where we operate. In 2022, we continued to: (i) monitor the impact of spinning blades on local species of birds at our wind farms in Uruguay, and (ii) collaborate with local administrations and other key stakeholders to protect species settled close to our assets in the U.S. and Spain. In addition, in 2022 we continued to deliver on our reforestation programme in Spain, where we planted approximately 14,000 trees.
Infrastructure is a key driver of economic growth and social value creation. At Atlantica, we produce and transport electricity and we provide drinking water to local communities. Our water assets provide drinking water to approximately 3 million people living in high or extremely high-water stress areas. Our solar asset in South Africa contributes to providing clean electricity in a country that requires additional power capacity. In South America, our transmission lines help transport electricity to remote areas. In addition, we foster communities’ economic prosperity through local purchasing and by hiring local employees. In 2022, we invested in sustainable energy infrastructure in the U.S., Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia and Italy. Within the energy sector, innovation contributes to the fight against climate change through new or enhanced technologies that enable more sustainable, reliable and efficient solutions, including storage and green hydrogen solutions. To ensure reliability of our assets we: (1) own 31 patents and technology licences, as well as 6 patents currently in approval process, related to key components of our assets, to processes and to solutions to monitor, operate and maintain our assets in a sustainable and cost effective manner, (2) have an operations department to identify potential measures to improve asset performance, reducing operating costs and developing tools to manage our assets more efficiently, and (3) have an advanced analytics team to improve the performance of our technologies through data analytics and machine learning technologies.
1 The target boundary includes steam generation.