Altri has a clear policy of making our world more renewable

The fact that our planet is warming up has forced nations and organisations to take measures to stop this phenomenon from escalating and generating even more extreme weather events, devastating the communities in which they occur.

The main culprits are identified as CO2 and other gases (methane, Nox -> GHG greenhouse gases), leading to the formation of a global movement dubbed decarbonisation (in reference to the element carbon – which can be found in CO2 and hydrocarbons, which are the main constituents of fossil or non-renewable fuels).

Reducing the impact of these gases has entailed:

• Cutting fuel consumption in absolute terms;
• Substituting fossil fuels with others from renewable sources;
• Capturing CO2 (and methane) from generation sources.

This reality is posing a tremendous challenge to society and particularly to some sectors of the economy whose business activities are more reliant on energy, particularly Europe which relies heavily on third party sources to assure its energy self-sufficiency.

However, this threat should also be considered an opportunity to take the lead in the field of innovative technologies which speed up economic growth and mitigate the risk of external dependence.

With its clear policy of making our world more renewable, and despite only 7% of its primary source of energy (fuels) being fossil-based, Altri’s commitments for 2030 include ambitious targets pertaining to the use of fossil fuels and emissions of GHG into the atmosphere:

• 100% of the primary energy used at Altri’s industrial units to be from renewable sources;
• 51% reduction of specific scope 1 and 2 GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and a 25% reduction of scope 3 emissions (kg/adtp) (baseline 2020);
• Reducing specific water use (m3/adtp) at Altri’s industrial units by 50%.

Following a period of strong growth over the last few years, and with an ambitious investment plan, now is the time to make operations more efficient and diversify the value creation strategy.

In this edition of Altri News, we will be taking a closer look at some technologies – some more innovative than others – which might be up to the challenges imposed by society and by the company itself.

Some articles will address the topic of producing hydrogen and renewable fuels by capturing biogenic CO2 in our chimneys and how waste from effluent treatment plants and livestock operations may be a significant energy source.

FINAL NOTE:

Our group company Caima has recently become the first 3F : Fossil Fuel Free factory in the Iberian Peninsula, and one of the first in Europe in our sector, now that its new biomass boiler is up and running.