The State delegate, Fran González, presented this morning together with Ezequiel Montero, from the TRAGSA Group, the ambitious Carbon Footprint Elimination Plan that covers all of the Consortium's activity.
The work will be carried out over nine months in several phases: the current carbon footprint will be evaluated and recorded, which will be externally validated, and an Improvement Plan will be proposed to reduce the emission and compensate for what do not arrive
Fran González highlights that this Carbon Footprint Elimination Plan “places the Free Trade Zone at the forefront of the state public sector, advancing in favor of a 4.0 industrial model and consolidating the commitment to the Blue Economy, with future energy absorption projects. blue carbon
The Cádiz Free Trade Zone takes a definitive step in its commitment to a more sustainable industrial model. The State delegate in the Consortium, Fran González, presented this morning together with the Head of Territorial Unit 5 (Andalusia, Extremadura, Ceuta and Melilla) of the TRAGSA Group, Ezequiel Montero, the territorial manager of Tragsatec UT-5 (TRAGSA Group ), Francisco Antonio Domínguez, and Inmaculada Llamas, coordinator of Actions and Projects of the firm, the Carbon Footprint Elimination Plan that the Institution is going to undertake within the framework of the Decarbonization Strategy of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge.
This is an ambitious proposal that includes a true global vision of the problem given that all of the Consortium's activity will be measured, including all buildings and equipment throughout the province. Furthermore, far from remaining solely in the measurement and registration in the Ministry's Carbon Footprint Registry, it is accompanied by an Improvement Plan that plans to act on two different fronts: mitigation with energy saving measures to be implemented to be even more efficient in energy consumption and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions; and on the other hand, compensation for what is not achieved with different complementary strategies.
The project will be developed over the next nine months in several phases. An initial one in which the carbon footprint generated by the Free Zone will be calculated, measuring all greenhouse gases, both through direct and indirect emissions, coming from the activity of the Consortium itself.
A second phase that includes the validation and verification of the results by an external company. And a third that includes registration in the Carbon Footprint Registry and mitigation and compensation measures with Carbon Dioxide (CO2) absorption projects.
Another of the innovative lines that this initiative presents is the vocation to focus compensation measures on a novel aspect such as blue carbon, in line with the sustainability and blue economy strategy already undertaken with Incubazul and in collaboration with the UCA and their work in this regard.
The Consortium delegate has defended that the extension to all the work of the Free Zone and with all possible emissions; the conception as a single element that also includes mitigation and compensation, in addition to calculation and registration; and the exploration of blue carbon compensation measures make the Free Trade Zone's Zero Footprint strategy one of the most ambitious of public institutions in Spain.
Project technical data
During the presentation of the initiative, the State delegate thanked the technical team of the TRAGSA group for its involvement and support in carrying it out, highlighting again the collaboration and joint work between administrations to achieve such unique projects as this one that "places to the Free Trade Zone of Cádiz at the forefront of the State Administration.”
Both measurement, registration and the Elimination Plan will be carried out throughout 2024 and part of 2025, with an estimated budget of 181,700 euros.
During the process of calculating the carbon footprint, direct emissions will be studied, such as fuel consumption in the facilities, in the vehicle fleet, other means of transportation used by the workforce, refrigeration equipment...; as well as the indirect ones that refer to the consumption of buildings, electricity from vehicles or other energies.
This resulting calculation must be verified by an external company, as required by the Ministry, a fundamental step for its registration. TRAGSA will advise and provide technical support to the Free Zone in all these steps that aim to result in a zero-emissions institution in the coming years.
“We want to set an example as a public administration and lead the strategy for decarbonization in the province of Cádiz, in line with the Agenda 20-30 of the Government of Spain and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations (UN)”, González explained during the press conference to present the project.
In this sense, the delegate of the Free Zone has stressed “that the Free Zone works with the objective of advancing 'without leaving a trace', in what is a definitive step in the commitment to a 4.0 industrial model and the consolidation of the Blue Economy as a reference for the province of Cádiz”.
“The objective is to develop and consolidate a responsible industry model committed to the environment in all our assets, printing a seal of sustainability and optimizing all facilities, adapting them to a new way of doing industry, promoting renewable energies, sustainable mobility and promoting the green-blue economy,” stressed the head of the Fiscal Institution,
Thus, he highlighted that, within the CO2 compensation measures that are being analyzed with Tragsatec and in collaboration with other entities such as the UCA, some very innovative blue carbon projects are being proposed, such as the recovery of coastal fronts and the restoration of coastal ecosystems that take advantage of the carbon richness of the sediments in tidal marshes and seagrass beds, very interesting and innovative initiatives in a province as rich in salt flats and estuaries as our province.
Fran González concluded by focusing “on the opportunity presented by projects like the one we present today to continue adding together to reference the Cádiz brand as an example of innovation, research, attracting talent and commitment to sustainable development, projecting progress and economic growth.”
