The company, leader in the fight against climate change in Andalusia, which achieved carbon neutrality in 2019, presents itself as a strategic ally for the support, advice and implementation of innovative measures that allow progress towards the ecological transition of cities and the achievement of its Urban Agenda

Betting on innovation and digitization is a necessity. In order to transform our cities into smart, resilient and green ones, and to meet the objectives set by the 2030 Agenda, especially in territories as vulnerable to climate change as Andalusia, where its consequences are increasingly palpable.

Decarbonization plays a very prominent role to achieve a very specific objective that allow Andalusian municipalities the application of effective measures. As a benchmark in the fight against climate change and committed to a management model based on the circular economy, Hidralia - an environmental company expert in the management of the integral water cycle - has spent years calculating and reducing its carbon footprint, having finally reached the complete neutrality throughout Andalusia, for which it was recognized with the Environment Award from the Junta de Andalucía.

Energy efficiency is one of the fundamental pillars on which Hidralia has based its strategy to achieve carbon neutrality. The company has opted for the generation of green energy in order to achieve energy self-sufficiency. For this reason, and throughout Andalusia, including its joint ventures, Hidralia has a total green energy generation capacity of more than 13 GWh/year, having launched ten new renewable energy generation actions in 2021. with an equivalent capacity of 266 MWh/year. One of the most relevant actions has been the photovoltaic installation to supply an isolated pumping station in Algarrobo (66 MWh/year).

Since 2017, Hidralia has achieved a total reduction in consumption equivalent to more than 7.5 GWh/year, making the reduction of emissions a fundamental axis of its strategy. This has made it possible to avoid the emission of more than 2,300 TCO2eq/year. As an example, only Hidralia has managed to reduce its carbon footprint by 41.2% since 2017.

The company integrates this approach into its management philosophy, in all the projects and actions it carries out, and puts its experience at the service of municipalities in order to preserve the environment and promote sustainability, as well as mitigate and promote the resilience of cities facing the effects of climate change.

Innovation to achieve their goals

Innovation and digital transformation are essential to achieve these goals. Hidralia, belonging to the Agbar Group, makes all its experience in sustainable water management and the use of digital solutions available to municipalities that, implemented in its Dinapsis network, help cities on their way to building and achieving their Urban Agenda.

Among these digital services is the Observatory of environmental and city indicators, which allows visualizing the temporal and spatial evolution of a catalog of up to 150 indicators related to different themes: City model, Environmental health, Resilience, Sustainable tourism, Decarbonization and Green/blue infrastructure.

The registration of information of satellite origin in relation to ecosystem and city model indicators constitutes a very useful tool for city councils in the definition and monitoring of their Urban Agenda, by identifying the degree of compliance in terms of limit values or recommendations of independent organizations of each of the selected indicators, helping to identify which areas or districts constitute the critical points on which to propose improvement actions aimed at alleviating the adverse effects of climate change in the municipality. In addition, the availability of monthly data makes it possible to carry out continuous monitoring of the evolution of the measures and the adoption of corrective actions in the event that the results obtained differ from those expected. The configuration of the tool guarantees that the data acquired is transparent and traceable, making it easier for the council to communicate with citizens, contributing to social change and the creation of public awareness in relation to sustainability and climate change.

In this way, city councils can identify the most sensitive opportunities and areas for intervention; define medium and long-term improvement objectives, based on objective and independent data, which are credible and achievable and, thanks to continuous monitoring, evaluate the degree of achievement of the progress of the actions.

As a notable example, Hidralia, in collaboration with the water technology center, Cetaqua, proposes projects whose objective is, through these indicators, to address the planning of green infrastructures in a municipality more effectively. With the indicators collected in the urban environment, it is possible to know what their benefits are, their status and how sustainable development strategies can be implemented that value urban green spaces (both intra-urban and peri-urban) and their contribution to citizenship, through the development of a methodology for spatial analysis of the territory.