Acea's industrial policy oriented towards the criteria of the green and circular economy had a positive, direct and indirect impact in 2020, both on the environment and on GDP, for an estimated total of 3.1 billion euro of added value. This is what emerges from a report by The European House Ambrosetti which analyzes the Group's activities in 2020, presented during the Sustainability Day organized by Acea, a moment of discussion on sustainability issues. At the center of the 2021 edition is the importance of having a fair ecological transition that can include, in addition to environmental aspects, also economic and social ones and that puts the person at the center, as an actor in the transition and beneficiary of its effects. In the background, the scenarios of the near future in which institutions and markets, businesses and civil society,they are called to rethink production models, to combine economic growth and sustainable development in pursuit of the objectives of the 2030 Agenda and the EU Green Deal.
Among the Group's activities that have had a greater impact on the environment and on the fight against climate change, we find energy policies which, thanks to the use of renewable sources, have made it possible to avoid the emission of 210,000 tons of CO2 in 2020, equal to the quantity absorbed in a year by 10.5 million trees, three times those currently present in all Italian capitals. 68% of the electricity produced by the Group is generated from renewable sources. In the water sector, where Acea is the leading national player in terms of number of inhabitants served (9 million located in 5 Regions), for investments (1.7 billion Euros in the last 5 years) and for kilometers of distribution network (over 53 thousand km , four times the return distance between Rome and New York),the Group is committed to sustainable water management through the protection of the water resource, the efficiency of the networks and the containment of the volumes of losses. On the waste treatment front, in 2020, Acea processed approximately 1.45 million tons of waste, positioning itself as the reference operator for Central Italy.
As regards the social sphere, Acea's workforce, made up of over 7,500 people, recorded the third performance for employment growth among Italian industrial companies in the last five years. Also considering the indirect and induced impacts, the total employment contribution reaches 27,000 equivalent jobs: in fact, 2.5 additional jobs are activated for each direct employee of Acea. Through the sustainability policies implemented, the company ranked third in the MID CAP segment of Borsa Italiana in the Governance Excellence Index of The European House - Ambrosetti, which evaluates five areas: among these is the company number one in the sustainability governance sub-segment.
"The path undertaken by the Group - explains Acea - is an important pillar on which to build an ecological transition plan for the company which will be the basis of the next industrial plan and which will aim to achieve the long-term objectives set by the 2030 Agenda" .
Among these, the 55% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is one of the priorities.
In this sense, the Group is launching new working groups called "unsustainable working groups", in collaboration with academic and technological partners, in order to implement this ecological transition plan with interventions and initiatives linked to the major macro-themes of sustainability: from decarbonisation to sustainable mobility, from the protection of water resources to the circular economy.
In collaboration with:
Acea
