Waste
When such waste has certain hazardous characteristics, it must be subjected to additional control in order to avoid any health or environmental damage during its production and management. Hazardous waste producers are obliged to store it under proper health and safety conditions for a maximum of six months following its storage.
Moreover, they are not allowed to mix or dilute hazardous waste with other materials, substances or waste having the same characteristics.
As for waste containment, it must be carried out so as to avoid any content loss, and the container must be built with materials that remain intact upon contact and are resistant enough to prevent any leakage during handling. Toxic waste containers must be labeled in a clear, legible and indelible manner, in at least one official state language.
Waste management hierarchy
In the European context, where waste production is steadily increasing and economic activities associated with waste are becoming more and more important, the European Parliament and Council Directive 2008/98/EC on waste (November 19, 2008) establishes the EU legal framework for waste management, providing the necessary tools to disentangle the relationship between economic growth and waste production; it places particular emphasis on prevention, understood as a set of measures adopted before a given product becomes waste, in order to reduce the quantity and content of hazardous substances as well as their harmful impact on human health and the environment.
The transposition of this Directive into national law was formalized by Law 22/2011 on waste and contaminated soil (July 28, 2011), which incorporates the principle of hierarchy in waste management and production, establishing the order of priority in waste policy interventions:
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Prevention
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Preparation for reuse
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Recycling
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Other kinds of recovery, including energy recovery
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Disposal
To ensure compliance with the provisions set out in Law 22/2011, the Board of Directors has included in EDP Spain’s Thermal Power Plants' “Integrated Environmental Permits” the obligation to “adopt appropriate measures to foster prevention in waste production, or, where appropriate, for the management of waste produced by the facility to be carried out according to the following order of priority: prevention, preparation for reuse, recycling and other kinds of recovery, including energy recovery, and, as a last resort, if the above are not feasible for any technical or economic reasons, waste disposal in such a way as to avoid or minimize its impact on the environment.”
Waste segregation in EDP Spain facilities is based on the following aspects:
- Waste storing facilities and clean areas: creating safe collection and storage facilities for waste and waste fractions.
- Waste Management Systems and Integrated Management Systems (IMS): selecting waste managers in order to ensure that final waste treatment complies with the established hierarchy: recycling, recovery and, only as a last resort, disposal.
- Employees and subcontractors: training and awareness-raising
Non-Hazardous Waste Management:
In order to collect waste fractions similar to household waste, EDP Spain has waste collection points with blue (paper), yellow (packaging) and green (glass) bins in the facilities where these are produced.
Cómo podemos proteger nuestros recursos
Nuevos modelos de consumo
La presión mundial para aumentar la eficiencia de los recursos y los esfuerzos por mejorar la sostenibilidad pueden convertirse en una fecunda fuente de innovación y competitividad industrial.
Fuente de innovación
Nuestro modo de producción y de consumo contribuye al calentamiento terrestre, a la contaminación, al uso de materiales y al agotamiento de los recursos naturales.
Producción más sostenible
Urge más que nunca la adopción de modelos de consumo y de producción más sostenibles.
¿Qué requisitos deben cumplir los residuos peligrosos?
Los productores de residuos peligrosos están obligados a mantenerlos almacenados bajo las condiciones adecuadas de higiene y seguridad durante un máximo de seis meses desde que se inicia su depósito. Además, está prohibido mezclar o diluir los residuos peligros con otros materiales, sustancias o residuos que tengan las mismas características.
En cuanto al envasado, deberá realizarse de forma que se evite cualquier pérdida de contenido –tal como está recogido en Real Decreto 83/88- y el contenedor debe estar construido con materiales que se mantengan intactos al contacto y resistentes para evitar cualquier escape durante su manipulación. Los envases que contengan residuos tóxicos deberán etiquetarse de forma clara, legible e indeleble al menos en un idioma oficial del Estado.
Other non-hazardous waste
Hazardous Waste Management
Hazardous waste is stored separately from non-hazardous waste, and the segregated fractions are managed with appropriate managers.
EDP Spain has established collaboration agreements with different Integrated Management Systems (IMS) to ensure the most appropriate treatment of the following hazardous wastes:
AMBILAMP: IMS for fluorescent lamp waste management.
INDUMETAL: IMS for electric and electronic device waste (EEDW), particularly electric meters.
ECOPILAS: ensures the recycling of batteries, accumulators and used batteries.
For all other hazardous waste, EDP Spain has signed agreements with Authorized Managers to ensure the treatment of all waste produced by its facilities; waste is duly segregated before being delivered for final treatment according to available recovery, recycling and/or valuation techniques.
It is one of EDP's most innovative solar energy projects - a floating farm with more than 12,000 photovoltaic panels in the Alqueva dam reservoir - and it has just received the final license to start the installation process. Works are expected to commence in summer and the company believes the farm will start producing energy as early as by the end of this year. With an annual production capacity of 7 GWh, the park is expected to produce enough energy to supply 25% of consumers in the region (Portel and Moura).
The projected solar farm, which also features a battery storage system, involves an investment of about €4 million and will be part of Alqueva plant, a pumped hydropower plant with one of the largest energy storage systems in the country. This project is being designed with a hybrid operation model, as the pumping system makes it possible to use solar and wind power in times of lower consumption to pump water from the reservoir and thus reuse it to produce new hydroelectric power.
Alqueva will therefore become a kind of living laboratory by allowing the company to test the complementarity between dispatchable (hydroelectric) and non-dispatchable (photovoltaic) renewable energy production technologies, as well as long-term (pumping) and short-term (battery) storage technologies. With 1 MW power and a storage capacity of about 2 MWh, the battery will feature lithium-ion technology, which is already widely used in the electricity sector worldwide.
Almost five years after the successful pilot project in Alto Rabagão (840 panels), EDP will now commence the installation of this larger scale farm - and in complete alignment with the company's overall strategy, which involves boosting investment in innovation and renewable energy projects in order to become a fully green company by 2030. Moreover, this project complies with the objectives of the Portuguese Government's Roadmap for Carbon Neutrality 2050, as it seeks to maximize the use of clean energy in the system and exploit the capacity of existing grid connections.
Less impact, greater efficiency
The Alqueva project also stands out for its environmental benefits, starting with the exploitation of an unused water mirror area that will not suffer any changes with the installation of these floating panels. Moreover, the production of electricity in floating plants benefits from favorable temperatures, especially during periods of heightened exposure to the sun and the wind. Lower temperatures near water surfaces make it possible to reduce the temperature of photovoltaic panels themselves, thus improving their efficiency; in the case of Alto Rabagão, such improvement reached 10% compared to equivalent fixed and onshore solutions.
On the other hand, the project's integration with a power plant with existing grid connections obviates the construction of new transmission and distribution lines and the consequent occupation of soil. In this case, hybridization could allow the doubling of the energy drained at the same point, without the need to increase the capacity of the line. All these environmental benefits have been pointed out in the project's Environmental Impact Study, which has been included in the evaluation and licensing process.
With this innovative project EDP will increase its installed renewable energy capacity, which currently stands at 19 GW - accounting for about 80% of the total and on the way to 100% by 2030. Renewable energy will therefore be decisive in this energy transition process, with an overall investment of €19 billion over the next five years, for an additional capacity of 20 GW.
Alqueva floating solar farm in numbers
- Number of panels: 12,000
- Platform size: 4 ha
- Installed Power: 4 MW
- Annual energy production: 7 GWh (~25% of houses in the region)
- Reservoir depth: 70 m
- Water plane oscillation: 23 m
EDP Spain initiatives for waste reduction
A new concept: Circular Economy
Demand for the planet’s resources exceeds the Earth’s replenishing capacity; moreover, industrialized countries have developed consumption profiles that in many cases make them dependent on other countries' resources, thereby exposing them to high prices and market volatility.
At the EU level, this problem has led the European Union to devise a strategy for attaining a more efficient resource consumption model.
This strategy, known as Strategy Towards a Circular Economy, will promote competitiveness, innovation and environmental protection, contributing to economic growth and job creation.
Circular economy requires different interventions at different stages of the product’s life cycle: from raw material extraction and product design to product distribution, consumption, repair, reuse, recycling, and waste management. All these stages are interconnected, and they all require specific measures to improve energy and and resource efficiency. Action is also required from the demand side, which means that the Strategy also involves the creation of innovative solutions and new markets.
In the near future, these EU policies will be translated into guidelines for all Member States, which in turn will convert them into operational requirements for all industry operators and action guidelines for society in general.
EDP is currently studying a strategy for the implementation of Circular Economy throughout its production cycle; the first step consisted in conducting a pilot analysis (in the Portuguese context) of the existing materials (receipts, issues and stock levels), in order to identify the main resources used by the different business units and define possible guidelines to optimize their use and the search for viable alternatives.