The Paris Agreement celebrates its sixth anniversary this coming Sunday. It has been 6 years since, within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, measures were established to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally.
The goal of ZERO CO2 emissions set for 2050 on 12 December 2015 was designed to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change and was a milestone at international level. It was a historic global, as highlighted by the fact that 190 climate change plans were submitted, covering around 99% of emissions from all Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The main objective of the Paris Agreement was to restrict the increase in global temperature to 2ºC, with the aim of not exceeding 1.5ºC compared to the pre-industrial period. The Agreement not only set the target, but indicated the road to attain it, and introduced the condition of carbon neutrality, which in the case of developed economies, should be achieved by 2050.
For Endesa, it represented an unprecedented challenge in terms of climate change, with the establishment of ambitious objectives with regard to climate change and already in its strategic plan 2017-2019 established its first commitment to have electricity generation with zero CO2 emissions by 2050. As a result of a great effort and commitment by the company, in just 5 years from the entry into force of the Paris Agreement, Endesa reduced its emissions by 70% since 2015 and by 82% since 2005, when the Kyoto Protocol came into force.
But "this is a critical time, when scientific evidence and the ambition in the new climate objectives is causing a comprehensive update to legislation, which will undoubtedly affect all sectors of the economy. Companies should rise to the occasion and we need to make significant changes in our operations, promoting sustainable transformation plans", said Jorge Pina, Endesa's Environmental Manager.
For this reason, Endesa is working to increase the ambition of its objectives, with a desire to respond to the needs of society and the planet and in the new strategic plan 2022-2024, presented in November, it has updated its commitment to energy transition with a renewed outlook for 2030 and a new key milestone: To bring forward complete decarbonisation by a decade, which we will now see by 2040.
This will be achieved on the basis of four main lines of action:
- The deployment of new renewable capacity that will make all generation activity 100% emission-free (inside and outside Mainland Spain), from 40% in 2021 and 70% estimated for 2030.
- Hybridisation of renewable installations with green hydrogen storage and production technologies.
- Abandoning the coal business by 2027 and the production of electricity using gas by 2040.
- Abandoning the retail gas marketing business.
Endesa has planned investments of €31,000 million between 2021 and 2030, 22% more than in the provision for 2030 presented last year. Of these, 40% will go to increasing renewable generation capacity to reach 24,000 MW, that is, 16 thousand MW additional to those in operation at the end of 2020. With this, production from clean sources will be multiplied by four up to 48 terawatts/hour and the proportion of emission-free generation in the mainland will reach 95%. Growth in renewables, together with a total exit from the coal business by 2027, are confronted from a circular economy point of view.
A further 40% will go to the distribution network, with €12,000 million, which will increase the base for regulated assets from €11,700 million to €13,000 million by the end of 2030. The aim of this is to go further in the improvement of security and the quality of supply, make the grid more efficient and flexible to meet the requirements of the new renewable generation planned, in addition to the new needs of customers. This means that the number of end users of Endesa's network will grow by 6% to 13.1 million, from 11.7 million at the end of this year.
The retailing business and Endesa X will take up €4,100 million between now and the end of the decade. With this, the number of customers in the free market segment is expected to grow by 23%, to reach about 6.9 million by 2030, up from the 5.6 million expected at the end of this year 2021.
About Endesa
Endesa is the largest electricity company in Spain and the second largest in Portugal. The company is also the second largest gas operator in the Spanish market. Endesa operates an end-to-end business from generation to marketing and through Endesa X also offers value-added services aimed at the decarbonisation of energy uses in homes, companies, industries and public administrations. Endesa is firmly committed to the United Nations SDGs and therefore strongly supports the development of renewable energies through Enel Green Power España, the electrification of the economy and Corporate Social Responsibility. The Endesa Foundation is also active in CSR. Our workforce numbers around 9,600 employees. Endesa is a division of Enel, the largest electricity group in Europe.