Acciona has put a price on carbon to affect both internal business decisions as well as external investment decisions, moving the company towards its 1.5°C commitment.
Acciona, a global renewable energy and infrastructure group, introduced an internal carbon pricing accounting system in 2016. This requires every business unit across Acciona’s global operations to measure its carbon emissions and pay for offsetting them, typically with carbon credits issued by the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, which helps finance sustainable projects in the developing world. This acts as an internal tax, incentivising each business unit to reduce its carbon emissions as much as possible without stipulating how it should be done. This suits the diverse range of activities the business units are responsible for.
In addition to the internal carbon price, Acciona also uses a shadow carbon price to assess the climate risk of future projects and investments. This shadow price is based on the estimated cost to society of a future project’s carbon emissions and helps to align business growth with Acciona’s 1.5°C commitment. Acciona halved its emissions between 2010 and 2015 and publicly advocates for more ambitious climate policy that includes carbon pricing mechanisms.
Acciona’s 1.5°C commitment
Acciona was one of the first companies to have committed to more ambitious science-based emission reduction targets aligned with 1.5°C of global warming and have these targets validated. The company is also part of the Caring for Climate initiative.
