Sustainable Development Goals

ACCIONA contributes to this project at a large scale, with over 1,033 billion litres of water treated through water treatment and desalination plants across the globe, and almost half of this water treated in water stressed countries. We also have integrated water management plans to manage and reduce water consumption within the company One example is the use of recycled water where possible. During construction of the WestConnex Tunnels in Sydney, recycling reduced water reduced consumption on the project by over 245 million litres!

Goal 7 outlines the need to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. Clean energy projects reduce the production of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere and other pollutants that cause health problems, produced whilst burning fossil fuels. ACCIONA is leading the way in this goal, being the world’s largest energy retailer that deals solely in renewably energy projects. In 2021, ACCIONA produced 24,541 GWh of renewable energy across the globe; enough to power over 7.6 million homes for a year. We have constructed and now operate multiple wind farms in Australia, with the MacIntyre Wind Farm soon to be added to our portfolio: when completed, the wind farm will be one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world.

Goal 9 involves building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and fostering innovation. Sustainable infrastructure is at the heart of ACCIONA’s activities. We are currently working on multiple major urban infrastructure and transport infrastructure projects geared to help growth, with 87.5km of roads built worldwide in 2021 and other projects such as the Western Sydney Airport Airside Civil Works underway. We strive to improve sustainability on these projects through implementing circular economy strategies to reduce waste, with 87% of waste recovered in our operations in 2021. We also contributed over €123 million specifically to improve construction innovation across 82 projects, so that our techniques are always improving.

Goal 11 asks us to help make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, by improving access to housing, transport and green public spaces, and reducing the environmental impacts of cities. ACCIONA is helping shape cities to pursue this goal, through work such as the level crossing removal projects in Australia, which has considerably improved road safety. Through our work on the São Paulo metro line 6 in Brazil, we also transported 600,000 passengers each day on public transport. Through these sustainable infrastructure projects and our renewables, we also avoided 1,454 tonnes of nitrous oxides, 2,033 tonnes of sulphur oxides and 28 tonnes of particulate matter through Spanish projects alone, all of which significantly worsen health outcomes.

Goal 13 demands urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, by strengthening resilience and significantly increasing mitigation activities. ACCIONA’s top priority is embracing the fight against climate change. We are focused on both mitigation, for example through our clean energy projects, and adaptation, such as strengthening access to resilient water sources in many countries. Climate action considerations are also integrated throughout our internal activities, and in 2021, we officially ratified our commitment to our circular economy strategy, aimed at reducing waste and consumption, thus reducing energy-related emissions from the production of goods and services. Thanks to these efforts, we avoided over 13 million tonnes of CO2-equivalents (greenhouse gases) in 2021.