Story | 19 Oct, 2017

IUCN and global energy company Enel to develop biodiversity best practices

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the global power company Enel have signed a one-year agreement aimed at strengthening the company’s biodiversity action plans across a diverse range of energy facilities as well as its global reporting.  

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Photo: IUCN/Jerome Duramy

Under the agreement, IUCN will support the development of new systems and tools to measure the effectiveness of the company’s biodiversity conservation activities with the intention of demonstrating the environmental and economic benefits to other energy producers.   

“Increasingly, progressive companies like Enel recognise that conserving biodiversity and reporting on these actions is critical to their long-term success,” says IUCN Global Director Stewart Maginnis“IUCN looks forward to working with Enel to create new systems to help the company measure its biodiversity impacts and benefits related to their energy infrastructures, which then can be mainstreamed at the sectoral level.”

More specifically, IUCN will help Enel to assess the biodiversity risks and opportunities associated with thermal and renewable plants; analyse and advice on best practices used to avoid and minimize impacts on biodiversity at the site level; and, develop a corporate reporting framework on biodiversity aligned with the global Sustainable Development Goals.  This will include site visits by IUCN experts in Italy, Mexico, Chile and Brazil.  

"We are pleased to cooperate with IUCN, which is a recognised global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. This partnership, in line with our sustainability approach, enables us to conjugate business objectives with the targets of the global sustainability agenda. With IUCN, in particular, we would like to contribute to the SDG 14 and 15 devoted to the protection of biodiversity, land and sea," says Ernesto Ciorra, Enel’s Head of Innovation and Sustainability, who together with Antonello Cammisecra, Head of Global Renewables, and Enrico Viale, Head of Global Thermal, signed the agreement on behalf of the company. 

About Enel

Enel is an Italian multinational energy company which produces, distributes and sells electricity and gas.  Present in more than 30 countries, it generates energy with a net installed capacity of around 83 GW and distributing electricity and gas across a network spanning about 2.1 million km.

Enel’s commitment to integrate sustainability into the business model has recently earned the company a position among the Fortune magazine’s 2017 “Change the World” list (which includes the 50 companies that have the potential to change the world), as well as among major world sustainability indices, such as the Dow Jones sustainability Index, the A list - Carbon Disclosure Project and the Euronext Vigeo – World 120 Index. 

Click here for more information about the IUCN-Enel agreement.