SMEs, CITIZENS JOIN HANDS. Spain is seeking a paradigm shift

Spain was, for a time, an international benchmark in the promotion of renewable energy.

Generous subsidies and cheap credit filled its landscapes with wind turbines and solar farms. But all that changed when the economic crisis triggered the Spanish Treasury’s default risk. Pressure from creditors and European partners forced the government to take tough and controversial measures to balance the public accounts. This included reducing pensions, raising the age of retirement, lowering the cost of laying off employees, and the end of incentives for renewables.

Cutting these subsidies, including for projects that were already in operation, disappointed investors and was a major blow for turbine manufacturers and park developers, who concentrated their business abroad. Despite this setback in the policy of support for renewables, the country is the focus of public and private initiatives that advocate changing the economic model based on sustainability.

The most ambitious of these is Grupo Español para el Crecimiento Verde [Spanish Group for Green Growth], a platform promoted by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture following the example of a similar initiative launched by the Cambridge Institute in Brussels, the Green Growth Group. More than 40 companies are involved in this initiative. Many of these are multinationals, such as Ferrovial, Iberdrola, Telefónica and Santander, which are listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange, but it also boasts SMEs, such as Ecoalf, Contazara and Factor Verde.

“It’s an open group which companies have been joining spontaneously,” says María Luz Castilla, PwC partner and consultant who acts as coordinator and technical secretary for the platform.

The purpose of GECV, that will officially become an association this month, is to provide insight on the international debate around the fight against climate change and to promote conditions that enable progress towards an economic growth model that is compatible with the efficient use of natural resources.

To that end, last May it published the Declaración de Barcelona (Barcelona Declaration), a document describing the conditions that must be met for this model to become a reality in Spain. Among other things, it called for the establishment of a “stable, predictable, and transparent” regulatory framework, eliminating administrative obstacles, promoting research and innovation, and facilitating access by companies to competitive financing.

This month, the GECV will publish a second declaration in which it will express its expectations ahead of the Paris Summit, to be held in December.

Another such initiative is the Fundación Empresa y Clima [Enterprise and Climate Foundation], which provides advice, training, and legal, technical and marketing consultancy on this topic. Created in 2008 under the auspices of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, the foundation is an observer member of the United Nations, which allows it to send representatives to all meetings and conferences organized by the UN.

“Companies, and the world at large, expect Paris to provide a legal agreement to gain confidence, accelerate capacity, and share information, but mostly they expect to have clear rules and principles to continue moving forward in a sustainable way,” says Elvira Carles, director of the foundation, which involves more than 45 organizations.

Forética, an association of companies and corporate social responsibility experts, is organizing a Clúster de Cambio Climático [Climate Change Cluster] that will be established at the end of November with the aim of transferring international trends, proven tools, or training in this area to companies.

Alongside these initiatives, many Spanish companies are taking their own action against climate change. Repsol, for example, has an energy and carbon plan in which they propose to reduce CO2 emissions by 1.9 million tons between 2014 and 2020, which is in addition to the 3.1 million tons already eliminated between 2006 and 2013.

Endesa has a sustainability plan and has reduced its emissions by 35% since 1990, the base year within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol, dropping from 695g/kWh to 453g/kWh in 2014, while Iberdrola has committed to reducing its emissions by 50% by 2030, with respect to its specific emissions in 2007. Furthermore, it has set the goal of being carbon neutral by the year 2050. The company notes that its level of emissions per kilowatt hour is currently 30% less than the average in the European electricity sector.

In a world that has been scandalized by cases such as Volkswagen, the question is: to what extent is the interest shown by these large multinationals genuine and not a corporate marketing strategy?

Castilla, from GECV, maintains that the best way to assess the degree of involvement of Spanish companies is to look at their position in rankings such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index or the CDP (Driving Sustainable Economies). According to the latest report by CDP, which analyzes the environmental performance of the largest Spanish and Portuguese companies by market capitalization, 94% have integrated the fight against climate change into their business strategy. Overall, the 125 companies surveyed (85 Spanish and 40 Portuguese) have invested over 14,500 million euros in reducing greenhouse gases.

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