Sustainability

Clean energy

Doubled installed capacity by grid-connecting 609 MW in Egypt, Malaysia, Brazil, Honduras and Mozambique

870,637 tons of CO2 emissions avoided from solar plants in operation

Redeployable solar entered a new segment through introduction of Release

Targeting 4.5 GW in operation and under construction by end of 2021

People

Zero serious injuries with delivery of 11.7 million working hours

Strong diversity with employees representing 40 different nationalities globally

Young and dynamic workforce with an average age of 37 globally

Local value creation

8,000 jobs created in projects under construction, of which a large part is local and unskilled labour

56 ongoing local development programmes across clean energy, health, education and infrastructure

Community solar PV to form a larger component of local community efforts going forward

Sustainable solar projects

In July 2019, we grid connected the first utility-scale solar power plant in Mozambique. Strong environmental and social standards were a key priority through the development and construction of the project.

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Sustainability highlights 2019

Managing our environmental & social impacts

We are committed to operating all our projects in line with the IFC’s Performance Standards and the Equator Principles. An overall focus of 2019 was to establish management systems in new projects.

Environmental & Social baseline studies were developed for all relevant projects in 2019 in close dialogue with project and financing partners.

Key health and safety statistics

The rate of recordable work-related injury was 1.5 per million working hours, down from 4.4 in 2018. The decrease reflects, among other things, several initiatives launched during the year to strengthen our HSSE culture across the Company.

We are also accumulating extensive experience from the global network of our project portfolio.

Respecting human rights – our social license to operate

One of our 2019 targets was to develop a corporate human rights policy in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

The policy was published on our corporate website during the fourth quarter of 2019 and will be distributed to project partners and other stakeholders in 2020.

Anti-corruption programme and training

Our policy of zero tolerance of corruption is set out in our ethics policy and governed by our Anti-Corruption Programme. The programme is risk-based, with a particular emphasis on the markets and activities with the highest exposure to corruption.

The Anti-corruption programme is supported by the Group-wide whistleblowing channel. A total of six whistleblowing reports were received during 2019. None of the reports resulted in confirmed incidents of corruption.

Responsible procurement

Parts of our due diligence process were automated in 2019 through the launch of an electronic vendor registration platform on our corporate website.

We audited all suppliers in major categories whom we procured from in 2019. We also conducted performance reviews on all suppliers in major categories, and through our screening process we removed three vendor applications from our database on grounds of corrupt practices.

Community engagement and grievance mechanism

We received 174 grievances during 2019 for projects in operation, under construction or under development. With the strong geographical expansion and rapid growth in the number of new projects, an increase in grievances is expected. 80% of the grievances were resolved in 2019 and the remaining 37 grievances are still in the process of being resolved.

Small scale solar PV in communities

Local communities located close to our solar plants often do not have access to electricity or rely on polluting sources such as diesel generators. In 2019, we implemented small scale solar system installations at a community hall and youth association in Ma’an, Jordan. We also engaged in the refurbishment of rooftop solar systems for 13 vulnerable households in Agua Fria, Honduras.

Community solar PV will form a larger part of our programmes in coming years.

Industry leader in ESG risk management

The latest ESG risk rating report by Sustainalytics ranked Scatec Solar as the company with the lowest ESG risk out of 450 companies in the global utilities industry.

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Strong improvements in climate disclosure

Scatec Solar started to report to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in 2019 to better identify and manage its environmental impact. CDP 2019 score: B – Management Level.

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A word from the CEO

The growing emphasis our investors and key stakeholders are giving to ESG matters is a clear sign that we are heading in the right direction.

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