martes, 16 de febrero de 2010

Renewable energy: a bet profitable

"You tend to think that sustainable development or social responsibility are not profitable. But they are if the commitments and incentives are real." These words by Georg Kell, executive director of Global Compact, a UN agency dedicated to helping the private sector to comply with the basic principles of social responsibility.

Kell said during a panel discussion on "Leadership in the path towards sustainability ', which took place on Monday at Columbia University in New York, only 20% of global companies are involved in activities to combat climate change including the renewable sector. The figure is small, "largely due to a lack of consensus on the vision" by companies and governments, said Kell. But it is twice what it was five years ago.

"Decades ago the talk of sustainable development. However, environmental measures have not only increased, but have been reduced. The only thing that has risen is that people use the term 'sustainable development'," lamented not without humor, Shahid Naeem, scientific director of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) of Columbia.

What is needed are real examples that show the viability of the sustainable model, the speakers agreed. And that example was Navarre.

The autonomous community intervened without complex at the meeting, organized by the Government itself and the aforementioned navarro college. Miguel Sanz Sesma, President of Navarre, spoke proudly of the bet that their community did two decades ago in renewable energy and how it is now reaping the harvest: currently, clean sources-this includes the hydro-met 65 % of regional electricity consumption, and in 2009 alone wind power 100% of domestic electricity demand for 92 days. "Not only that. Moreover, we have a lot of money to renewable energy," said Sesma. In fact, the renewable sector contributes navarro 5% of regional GDP.

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