Creating Shared Value

Building sustainability into the day-to-day running of business is the primary objective of the Creating Shared Value (CSV) projects run by the Directorate General for Sustainability. The projects set out to create shared value through actions which marry the interests of the company with the priorities of the local communities where it operates.

In the words of Mark Kramer, Founder and Director General of the consultant FSG, and a Global Ambassador for a sustainable business model, “Creating shared value means looking for business opportunities in solving social issues, pursuing financial success also creating benefits for society”.

“The interdependence between the success of business and that of society is a fact. Companies should stop thinking that social problems are marginal to the busines”

Mark Kramer

CSV is a priority for the whole of the Enel group. For every new project, the team defines a plan of social action alongside the technical and financial aspects of the initiative. Little by little, we are also incorporating the CSV process into the running and maintenance of all our thermal and renewable energy plants, and there are plans to extend it to distribution and commercialisation as well, in the future.

How do you run a CSV project?

In order to carry out a CSV project, in the region where the asset or project with which we want to work is located, we build a multi-disciplinary team, led by Sustainability and comprising representatives from the business departments along the value chain and other areas of the company. That transversal team analyses the local environment, identifying and prioritising different interest groups. Also, we observe what their concerns and interests are, and analyse the environmental, social, regulatory aspects and the critical factors in that environment.

The next step is to define a CSV Plan, which must align with the company’s strategic objectives. That plan contains a set of concrete actions which serve the interests and address the concerns of the local community with regard to the asset that the CSV is following.

The CSV plan, once defined and set in motion, must be monitored and periodically updated to ensure it retains its function of shared value for the company, at all times, for the whole of the asset’s working life.

Where are we working?

The CSV initiative began being rolled out in 2015. It started in the Canary Islands, with the establishment of CSV processes at the Candelaria plant in Tenerife, Salinas in Fuerteventura and Punta Grande in Lanzarote.

Today, other CSV processes are under way at other power plants in the Canaries and Balearic Islands. The objective for 2018 is to have CSV processes in place at all our thermal and renewable power plants.

CSV plans are being drawn up to run in conjunction with the new planned wind farms and solar arrays that will be built to meet the power quota awarded to Endesa in the last two rounds of tenders for renewable energy held in Spain. We have also been working towards CSV alongside the Engineering teams in the dismantling of the Foix plant in Barcelona, and in the projects currently under way at the thermal power plants at Litoral and As Pontes to adapt them to the new Industrial Emissions Directive from the EU.

The search for “shared value” for the business and all its interest groups is an opportunity to combine competitiveness with social value creation in the local area, building a strong relationship in the long term. This is the direction in which Enel’s activity has been going in recent years.

Ultimately, this is a different focus, a new way of doing things, including sustainability in all corporate decisions, and recognising the fundamental maxim that the growth of our company must go hand in hand with creating value in the surrounding communities around the plants with which we are working.