World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5, has this year’s motto “One Earth” and calls for profound changes in policies and in our decisions to live in harmony with nature, promoting a more sustainable lifestyle. clean, ecological and sustainable.
Climate change, caused by human activity, is aggravating the loss of biodiversity and this loss, in turn, is accelerating global warming, since many of the affected ecosystems, such as oceans and forests, are decisive in absorbing greenhouse gas emissions. carbon.
Water, a basic resource for the existence of life, suffers the consequences of all this. Droughts and floods follow each other. The quality of water decreases and, above all, its scarcity is further aggravated.
In 2030, it is estimated that 47% of the population will live in areas with water stress, with Spain being one of the most affected areas.
Hidraqua and its affiliated companies in the Valencian Community offer innovative solutions in the sustainable management of water, natural resources and environmental health for cities, in line with the roadmap of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDG) of the United Nations. In the fight against climate change and the preservation of the environment, Hidraqua relies on innovation and digitization, as well as alliances, to accelerate the ecological transformation and thus contribute to better protecting the planet and improving the quality of life of people.
To this end, Hidraqua has developed a climate strategy based on four axes: climate change mitigation, adaptation to the consequences of climate change, circular economy models and climate-responsible models.
Within these axes, Hidraqua and its affiliated companies have launched numerous projects to contribute to each of them: 100% of the energy consumed by the company comes from renewable sources, which has prevented the emission of 23,6142 t CO2 in the last year; generates energy for self-consumption in its own facilities; It currently has 216 electric and hybrid vehicles and verifies, in some of its investee companies, their carbon footprint according to the 14064 standard.
In 2021 alone, the company produced 7.1GWh of renewable energy, which comes mainly from the use of biogas (74.8%) and 24.2% from photovoltaic solar energy.
On the other hand, Hidraqua, hand in hand with its digital transformation centers Dinapsis, collaborates with the municipalities in the development of resilience plans, aimed at the territorial coordination of services and infrastructures from a resilient point of view, allowing the municipality to ensure the their continuity in destabilizing situations, as well as optimizing their day-to-day management.
In addition, the company has a digital platform, developed in collaboration with Agbar, a business group to which it belongs, which allows it to analyze, through simulations, the capacity of the main existing infrastructures of a city to mitigate the effects of floods and evaluate measures alternatives to improve the resilience of the area. This tool has already been transferred by Agbar to the Alicante Provincial Council so that it can be used in the municipalities of Vega Baja that suffered the serious consequences of DANA in 2019.
Similarly, Hidraqua and its affiliated companies work on circular economy projects aimed at giving water a second life through its regeneration. In 2021, the company reused almost 60% of the treated water, which represents 41,800,371 M3 for agricultural, environmental and urban use, among others. A highly representative value, since the average of reclaimed water in Spain stands at 7.1%.
It is also important to underline, within circular economy projects, the use of 100% of the sludge from purification for agricultural application as fertilizer and thermal recovery; as well as the use of recycled materials in the works for filling trenches.
