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 plan to reduce our water consumption at our generating assets that use cycled water in the turbine circuit and in refrigeration processes. In 2023, we recycled 17% more water, which mainly contributed to a 4% decrease in our overall water consumption. In addition, we have a target approved by the Board of Directors to reduce our water consumption per unit of energy generated (KWh) by 50% by 2035, from a 2020 base year. In 2023, our water consumption per unit of energy generated decreased by 5% compared to 2022. We invest in water desalination plants that generate drinking water for local communities and industries through the desalination of sea water. In 2023, these assets generated purified seawater to meet the water needs of approximately 3 million people in regions with limited access to fresh water.
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 2023, our renewable sector accounted for 73% of our revenue, with solar energy representing 63%. We intend to grow our business through the development and construction of projects including expansion and repowering opportunities, as well as greenfield developments, third-party acquisitions and the optimisation of our portfolio. During 2023, four assets that were under construction entered into operation: - Albisu, the 10 MW PV asset reached COD in January 2023. - La Tolua and Tierra Linda, two PV assets with a combined capacity of 30 MW both reached COD in the first quarter of 2023. - Honda 1, a 10 MW PV asset reached COD in December 2023. In addition, we have 3 PV projects, 2 storage projects and 2 transmission lines that are currently under construction. We currently have a pipeline of assets under development of approximately 2.2 GW of renewable energy and 6.0 GWh of storage. We are also in the process of selling our 30% stake in one of our efficient natural gas assets.
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 2023 targets, improved with respect to 2022 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 2023, 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 2023. 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 2023, more than 90% of our total purchases in the geographies where we have assets were made to local suppliers.
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. Following our long-term commitment to sustainability, we have set an ambitious plan to reduce: 1. Our GHG emissions. We target to: (i) reduce our Scopes 1 and 2 GHG emissions per kWh of energy generated by 70% by 2035 from a 2020 base year1. This target has been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) (ii) reduce Scope 3 GHG emissions per kWh of energy generated by 70% by 2035 from a 2020 base year, and (iii) achieve 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 addition, we have a goal to maintain over 85% of our adjusted EBITDA generated from low carbon footprint assets including renewable energy, storage, transmission infrastructure and water assets. In 2023, we reduced (i) our Scopes 1 and 2 GHG emissions per kWh of energy generated by 14% compared to 2020 and (ii) our Scope 3 GHG emissions per kWh of energy generated by 20% compared to 2020. In addition, we helped avoid up to 7.0 million tonnes of equivalent CO2 compared to a 100% fossil fuel-based generation plant.
We promote equal opportunities for our employees and stakeholders. Atlantica’s Diversity and Inclusion Policy was approved by the Board of Directors in May 2020 and was last amended in December 2021. 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 aim to perform a human capital analysis every 4 years at certain locations. The objective of this analysis is to guarantee equal opportunities to our employees and to promote a culture of diversity and inclusion. We analyse gender pay gap, for the year ended December 31, 2023 the total overall pay gap decreased and was 5%.
We work to protect flora and fauna in and around our assets. We are committed to achieving “no net loss” of biodiversity and “no net deforestation” in the areas where we operate and in all project phases through the application of the Mitigation Hierarchy. In 2023, 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. We have set a target to reduce our hazardous and non-hazardous waste per unit of energy generated by 30% and 40%, respectively, by 2035 from a 2023 base year. In addition, in 2023 we continued to deliver on our reforestation programme in Spain, where we invested approximately $445 thousand in reforesting a new 48-hectare area and maintaining previously reforested areas.
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 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 2023, four PV assets that were under construction reached COD in Uruguay and Colombia. In addition, as of December 31, 2023, we have 2 battery storage projects in the U.S., 1 PV project in Chile, 2 transmission lines in Peru and 2 additional PV projects in Colombia that are under construction and that we expect will reach COD during 2024-2025. We also have a pipeline of assets under development of approximately 2.2 GW of renewable energy and 6.0 GWh of storage. 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 22 patents and technology licences, as well as 4 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.