Iberdrola’s story of action
We Mean Business Coalition
A growing number of companies are going all in for halving emissions by 2030. The We Mean Business Coalition spoke to leading renewable energy company Iberdrola to find out how they are taking climate action.
The world as we know it requires energy to function. Energy is a vital resource for sustaining and improving human life. However, we must reverse the impact on the environment and innovate urgently for a sustainable future.
As one of the world’s top three largest electricity companies, Iberdrola is innovating to create the energy system of the future. We are cutting emissions from power generation in line with the 1.5ºC pathway, with an ambitious investment roadmap based on renewables, networks, storage, and future solutions – such as green hydrogen. In the last five years alone, we have reduced direct emissions by 25%. Now, we are investing a further €150 billion throughout this decisive decade, focusing primarily on renewable energy and smarter grids, building on €120 billion investment over the last two decades. In the process of this transformation, we have become a global leader in wind power. In 2030, Iberdrola will have three times more renewable energy capacity than it did in 2019.
Iberdrola has closed all its coal and fuel oil plants since 2001 over the world and by 2020 the group’s total installed coal power was reduced to zero. We are committed to always working with local authorities to guarantee jobs and minimize impact on supply chains and the local economy. Over 400,000 jobs are supported globally by our investment activities, which has seen us develop a renewable energy capacity of more than 35,000 MW installed globally. At the halfway stage of 2021, 8,500 MW of renewable generation assets were under construction worldwide. Across the full-year 2021 4,000 MW of new capacity will be commissioned.
In 2020, CO2 emissions per MWh generated were among the lowest at the national and international level, with 75% of our overall production emission-free. Our global CO2 emissions will be reduced to an average of 50g/kWh by the end of the decade. By comparison, the average emissions of European electricity companies are 249 kgCO2/MWh [1].
Now we urge the world’s governments to go all in by incentivizing the global economy to shift rapidly from polluting activities. Governments can scale-up climate solutions by developing robust Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), align finance and COVID-19 recovery plans with a 1.5ºC trajectory, enable supportive environments for renewable investments, and ensure efficient and streamlined administrative and permitting processes. This is essential for getting all parties across our value chain on board, which is critical for us to achieve our targets and, on a broader scale, for mitigating every fraction of a degree of temperature increases that will define whether or not we can look forward to a thriving, secure and resilient future. We are all in for 2030.
[1] Source: European carbon factor Benchmarking of CO2 emissions by Europe’s largest electricity utilities (December 2020, PwC).