Spanish infrastructure major Acciona accelerated the development of its 2025 Sustainability Master Plan (2025 SMP) last year with Minerva, an innovative measurement and assessment tool that provides a digital and transparent report on the sustainability indicators of each of its projects.

 

Thanks to Minerva, Acciona has a tool that provides the necessary detail level of information to align the group's business objectives with those of environmental, social and economic impact, as stated in Acciona's 2022 Non-Financial Statement Report.

 

Minerva is the ecosystem that centralizes and structures the collection and standardization of non-financial information and allows such information to be shared globally with all company users through a self-service model. 

 

Therefore, each user is autonomous when obtaining reliable data and preparing the reports required at any given moment, it stated.

 

The company has also developed the Sustainable and Regenerative Project Design Guide, which promotes the development of competitive advantages in ESG terms for all project development and execution processes.

 

The report also shows how, during the past year, the company increased the weight of ESG criteria in its variable remuneration systems from 8% to 10%. The decision affects the almost 6,500 people in a total of 34 countries subject to this remuneration model at Acciona. 

 

According to Acciona, the elements that form part of this assessment include the score obtained in benchmark ESG indexes, the percentage of women in management positions, the accident frequency rate, the alignment of investments with the EU taxonomy and, above all, compliance with annual carbon budgets, in which greenhouse gas emission targets are set for each business unit.

 

The Spanish group pointed out that eligible Capex was 98% aligned with the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities, in a substantial increase over the 93% of the previous year, exceeding the target levels established in the 2025 SMP.

 

Moreover, it managed to reduce 36% of its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions compared to 2017, the baseline year established in the 2025 SMP, thus remaining on the decarbonization track set for 2030. Scope 3 emissions were cut by 8%. 

 

Other notable indicators linked to climate action include the generation of 23,910GWh of renewable electricity, which prevented the release of 13.2 tonnes of CO2 emissions and nearly 35,000 tonnes of other greenhouse gas emissions, it stated. 

 

Acciona said it continues to incorporate Social Impact Management (SIM) into all the new projects to ensure that they help reduce social and environmental gaps in the areas where it operates, through initiatives for education and training, entrepreneurship, gender equality, inclusion of disadvantaged communities, ecosystem regeneration or basic services. 

 

The company applied and implemented its SIM methodology in a total of 253 projects in 28 countries.-TradeArabia News Service