Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade's intervention at the Climate Ambition Summit, at the invitation of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on last 20 September, was the highlight of EDP's participation in Climate Week in New York, one of the world's most important meetings on climate challenges. Recognised as a global leader in climate action, EDP was the only company invited to speak at a session dedicated to carbon neutrality targets, regulation and the credibility of decarbonisation and sustainability strategies.

In his speech, the CEO of EDP had the opportunity to present the company's evolution and its contributions to a global energy transition, highlighting EDP's commitment to carbon neutrality and its main strategic goals. Reinforcing EDP's ambition to phase-out coal by 2025, to be all green by 2030 and net-zero by 2040, Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade emphasised that "85% of the energy produced by EDP already comes from renewable sources. This is up from just 20 per cent 15 years ago. So we are clearly making progress along this path, although there is still much more to do."  

A path that involves a significant investment of 25 billion euros over the next four years, the vast majority in the development of renewable energies, but also the conversion of thermoelectric production centres. "In the next 18 months, we will completely stop using coal. Portugal, which is one of the 30 markets in which we operate, no longer has coal. We will stop using gas in 2030. So we will be totally green by 2030 and we have a very credible commitment to carbon neutrality by 2040," he assured leaders and representatives of various world organisations.

He also emphasised the fact that "clean energy and renewable energy not only have no emissions but are incredibly cheap today. Solar energy has fallen 95 per cent in terms of cost in the last decade. The same has happened with wind energy. Renewable energies are perfectly competitive with other energy sources and we see this every day in many of the different markets in which we operate."  Even so, he recalled, there are still many challenges that need to be overcome together in order to scale up: "large grid connections, interconnections, complex authorisations, licensing, issues related to the sometimes negative reaction of local communities. These are all implementation difficulties that are complicating the expansion of renewable energies in the short term. Clear and coherent regulation is absolutely fundamental," concluded EDP's CEO.

The session can be reviewed at this United Nations link.

Energy transition in the spotlight

Under the motto "We can. We will.", Climate Week featured more than 450 events and activities throughout New York City, USA, which has become a meeting point for countless business leaders, political decision-makers, environmentalists and representatives of civil society from around the world.

In addition to the Climate Ambition Summit, EDP took part in more than 15 events at Climate Week in New York, which is already one of the world's most important climate meetings and has been a preview of the agenda and key themes of the COP - Climate Conference, which this year will take place between November and December in Dubai.

In addition to Miguel Stilwell d'Andrade, the EDP delegation also included João Talone, chairman of the General and Supervisory Board, Vera Pinto Pereira, board member of EDP and CEO of EDP Comercial, Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renováveis - North America, Pedro Pires, CFO of EDP Renováveis - North America, Gustavo Monteiro, CEO of EDP Renováveis NA Produção Distribuída, Miguel Viana, global director of Sustainability and Investor Relations, and Madalena Callé Lucas, from the group's Sustainability team, among others.

Among the most important speeches, Sandhya Ganapathy also addressed hundreds of investors and financiers at REFF-Wall Street and numerous corporate stakeholders at the Forbes Sustainability Summit. In addition, Gustavo Monteiro had the opportunity to lead a corporate round table on energy resilience strategies together with Fortune 100 companies and civil society organisations at the Concordia Summit. Miguel Viana also presented the company's case study at the New York Stock Exchange, centred on EDP's investment plans to achieve sustainable, science-based climate targets. EDP also took part in round tables organised by the World Economic Forum, the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, the IKEA Foundation, Google, Capgemini, Axios and the Climate Resolute Council.