Generating environmentally sustainable energy, accelerating renewables, protecting biodiversity, and above all, improving on its environmental track record are the main bearings guiding Enel Green Power’s Environment business unit as it fields numerous global and local initiatives throughout the countries where it operates.
Yet, as today we mark the 46th anniversary of World Environment Day, we jump at the chance to showcase the flagship projects from Enel Green Power, dedicated to environmental protection, along the entire life cycle of our plants.
“Environmental issues are our mantra. As a matter of fact, we’re convinced that working together on a common goal is key to support the growth of our business by promoting initiatives that render our projects and power plants ever more environmentally sustainable.”
- Andrea Biasotto, Head of Environment – HSEQ (Health, Safety, Environmental and Quality) at EGP
In a challenging year like 2020, our commitment towards preventive actions remains very high, as we’re monitoring the permitting process during the Operation phase of our power plants and the environmental risk assessment on specific sites - all part of our action plan, together with ECoS (Extra Checking OnSite) programs and other bespoke activities.
Reducing the strain on the environment
The WAVE and ZERO WASTE projects boost our commitment to promoting ever more environmentally sustainable activities.
WAVE (Water Value Enhancement), is focused on the sustainable management of hydro resources. Through strict procedures enabling ever more conscious management of such a precious resource like fresh water, we aim to substantially lower the water footprint of our power plants.
In 2019, Enel’s power plants already managed to lower by 20% the overall water requirement for energy generation activities used in 2018. Thanks to WAVE we’ll keep on lowering our impact on water resources, eliminating waste while maximizing the use of water in all our power plants.
By using the same approach, the ZERO WASTE project is aiming to improve the performance of waste recovery and production rates in our power plants by optimizing the recovery process and finding out more sustainable solutions for the disposal process. In 2019, we’ve already improved by 10% the waste recovery rates compared to 2018, although thanks to the ZERO WASTE project we’re keen to set the bar even higher.
The Environmental Matrix is another project we’ve recently launched. Its goal is to improve the mapping of the environmental footprint of energy generation activities throughout their entire life cycle - from extracting natural resources to the construction phase, right up to the operational phase together with the decommissioning and the final recovery of waste products - identifying all preventive and mitigation measures carried out, even beyond our business reality.
“The WAVE and ZERO WASTE projects perfectly embody our ongoing efforts to promote initiatives that can propel Enel Green Power to excellence in dealing with the environmental footprint of energy production throughout our power plant portfolio. Instead, through the Environmental Matrix project, we’re aiming to map out all possible impacts our technologies make throughout their life cycle. This is done as a way to project our outlook to realities outside our business reality, in order to gain actionable insights from other ventures of this kind. The final goal is to create a useful and fully integrated tool for our activities, supporting the inclusion of environmental factors in corporate decisions.”
- Daniela Trevisan, Head of the Environmental Competence Center – Environment HSEQ at EGP
Towards a “data-driven” environmental management
Over the next years, Enel Green Power will set one of its priorities in improving the monitoring process of its environmental actions, blending a series of currently available metrics to create a unique and standardized measuring system for our portfolio of power plants. This is the reason driving us to streamline by 2021 a unique portfolio of KPIs and environmental targets, abiding by the highest international standards.
“In EGP we rely on data as a multiplying factor to improve our environmental performance throughout the value chain. The digitization of monitoring activities is increasing the availability of information proving decisive in supporting the decision-making process. Basically, we’re introducing environmental metrics as a key driver for the operativity of our power plants, the investment approval process, as well as the selection process of suppliers. Furthermore, the public reporting of services and targets is helping boost the Group’s overall market attractiveness.”
- Claudio Mosti, Head of Environmental Projects – Environment HSEQ EGP
Environmental protection in decommissioning
The BEPP Decommissioning is yet another far-reaching project and a testament to our commitment to environmental protection. Starting from a benchmark study performed at a global level, this initiative strives to identify the best practices that can improve how the decommissioning process is managed, exploring a series of specific actions like “de-permitting”, the decontamination of water and soil, securing a site, demolitions, waste treatment, etc.
Hence, here are a set of projects that ultimately aim to foster a business model that places environmental protection as one of its pillars, throughout the entire value chain and the full life cycle of our power plants.