The Enel delegation led by CEO Francesco Starace will play a strategic role in the various activities that will take place in New York during the course of a week dedicated to sustainability. Enel is one of the sponsors of Climate Week, the most important global climate-oriented event organized by the private sector. The initiative, which is coordinated by the Climate Group, is in its 14th edition. Its slogan this year is “Getting it done” and it aims to drive everyone toward a greater commitment to protecting the environment and the rapid implementation of all the actions needed to mitigate climate change.
The Enel CEO, together with a select group of counterparts at leading companies in the UN Global Compact, will meet with António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations. This is in order to define the next steps to reinvigorate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and reinforce the private sector’s contribution to the 2030 Agenda. This action program for People, the Planet and Prosperity was signed in September 2015 by the governments of 193 UN member countries.
The UN Global Compact will also bring together high-level representatives of businesses, governments and institutions in the Private Sector Forum to discuss common solutions to complex and interconnected crises. These include growing concern about the threat to the global economy, climate change and unprecedented humanitarian challenges. CEO Francesco Starace will be speaking at the Forum as part of a panel on finance and the investments that are necessary for renewable energies and sustainable development.
Francesco Starace is also Chair of SEforALL, Sustainable Energy for All. This is the international initiative aimed at intensifying efforts to advance electrification and ensure universal access to reliable, modern and affordable energy services in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 17.
In line with this ambition, 2021 saw the launch of the Energy Compacts: voluntary commitments made by governments, businesses and civil society with time-specific targets. So far, more than 200 have been launched and Enel is a key player in three of them: the Group Energy Compact, the Green electrification of Sardinia, which was launched in 2021, and the Enel Chile Energy Compact. This was announced on May 4 with the goal of developing photovoltaic capacity and promoting electrification of final uses in the city of Santiago.
Furthermore, our CFO Alberto De Paoli will open the discussions of the Global Compact’s CFO Coalition. Here, together with other CFOs and investors, he will conduct a detailed examination of the actions needed to ensure that private investments increasingly contribute to the achievement of the SDGs. Also of note is the presence of Giulio Fazio, Enel’s General Counsel, who will open the discussions connected to the new Global Compact initiative on Transformational Governance which aims at expanding the role of legal professionals in sustainability driving the business decisions.
The event in New York confirms the huge importance that the United Nations attributes to climate issues, sustainability and the energy transition toward a system based on renewable sources, as well as the role that Enel aims to play in this scenario.