Composing with wind turbines, solar panels and electricity pylonsIberdrola is a Spanish energy company with 34,000 employees and nearly 32 million customers. It is a global company with operations in the United Kingdom and the United States. It’s also in Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Australia, and France, mainly focused on renewable energy — and the second-largest wind generator in the world.
The company aims to be carbon-neutral by 2040 in all areas of its operations: Scopes 1,2, and 3. The first two are linked to its internal functions and the fuels it buys, while the latter is tied to its supply chain. “We are world leaders in the fight against climate change, and we take an active role in the different Climate Summits, fully aligned with the objectives of the Paris Agreement,” the company says.
It supports the European Parliament’s minimum target of 32% renewable energy by 2030, saying it is achievable. But it cautions that the right regulatory environment must be in place. That inevitably leads to the greater use of renewable energies and electric vehicles. By 2030, Iberdrola will triple its installed renewable capacity to 95 gigawatts. It is 44 gigawatts now, which will rise to 60 gigawatts in 2025.
The European Union is phasing out the internal combustion engine by 2040, while this country wants half of all vehicles to run on electricity by 2030. The United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives tax credits to those who buy electric vehicles. Specifically, President Biden wants half of all U.S.-sold vehicles to run on electricity by 2030.
General Motors, Ford Motor Co., and Stellantis said they would comply. BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Volvo also applaud the endeavor. They all say that the federal government needs to make significant investments in the charging infrastructure to succeed. Others emphasize that the most important incentives are financial — giving tax breaks to EV buyers, a movement working in Norway where 75% of all new vehicles run on electricity.
“Transport is responsible for a quarter of CO2 emissions at the global level and for the majority of city pollution,” Iberdrola says. “A highly effective way to solve both problems, which have a common origin, is to electrify transport through electric vehicles, thereby improving energy use by increasing efficiency.
“Iberdrola is committed to transport electrification, having rolled out an ambitious Sustainable Mobility Plan. It has also been the first Spanish business to subscribe to The Climate Group's EV100 initiative, committing it to electrify its entire fleet in Spain and the United Kingdom by 2030,” the company continues.
Investing in its grid network has improved not just emissions levels — the grids are more efficient and can thus carry more green electrons — but they have also bettered response times to incidents: extreme weather events. The investments involve automation of the medium-voltage grid, thereby improving identification, isolation, and replacement times following incidents. It says that metered electric load served through the group’s smart grids is close to 100% in Spain and more than 53% in the United States.
Iberdrola is deploying energy efficiency measures in its buildings and offices worldwide. It improves building heating and cooling technologies, thermal insulation, and lighting. To that end, the company is saving water by replacing the least efficient thermal technologies with those that run on renewables and combined-cycle natural gas. It is also recycling and reusing water across its production cycles.
Its motto is the ‘best waste is the one that is not produced, and anything else must be recycled or reused. The circular economy is, therefore, essential to the energy transition tied to decarbonization and electrification. Indeed, increasing renewables and generating fewer emissions are part and parcel of circular principles.
It has avoided more than 73 million tons of CO2 due to its efforts over the last three years.
“The Iberdrola group also prioritizes the hiring of companies with environmental management systems: driving eco-design in collaboration with our suppliers, analyzing product life cycles, and encouraging the use of materials with low environmental impact. On the other hand, it offers its customers high-energy efficient products that make use of digitalization and use renewable energies, and the group also promotes electric mobility,” the company says.
In 2017, the company signed the so-called Circular Economy Pact — a covenant with the European Commission to make the continent resource efficient. In 2019, Iberdrola identified ways to reduce waste, increase the waste recycled, and expand the use of secondary materials.
— Develop renewable electricity, predominantly hydroelectric, offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar photovoltaic energy;
— Select products that have a small environmental footprint;
— Use technologies that consume less water;
— Solve waste-recycling problems through innovation projects with suppliers and technology centers, and
— Determine how raw materials are impacting emission levels.
