ACCIONA Agua´s Beckton (London, UK) desal plant wins GWI "most sustainable project" award

The renewables-driven plant will deliver water for 900,000 inhabitants.

The desalination plant owned by Thames Water and which Acciona is constructing jointly with Interserve by the Thames River Estuary, was voted the Most Sustainable Project at the Annual Ceremony of the Global Water Intelligence (GWI) which took place in Zurich yesterday. The award is given to the project or company showing the best social, environmental and financial contribution of 2008.

This is ACCIONA’ S third consecutive annual GWI recognition: in 2007 the company took the "Desalination Plant of the Year" award and in 2008, the same award went to the Tampa (USA) desal plant.

The UK´s Beckton desal plant, which will provide water for around 900.000 people in London, will pioneer the use of ACCIONA-developed energy-saving technologies that also mitigate the impact on wildlife. As a result, every single detail of the construction and the commissioning phase is being carried out with extreme care in order to safeguard sustainability and ensure maximum respect for the environment.

The Beckton plant will be the first to extract water from the Thames using reverse osmosis membrane desalination. The plant is expected to deliver 150 million litres of potable water a day. In order to avoid a negative impact on the environment and to keep down CO2 emissions arising from the energy consumption required for water treatment processes, the Beckton desal plant will be driven exclusively by renewable energies.

The 250 million euro plant is scheduled to start operating at the end of 2009.

Global Water Intelligence is the international Water industry’s most prestigious publication. Votes came from more than 600 subscribers worldwide. The awards ceremony, held in Zurich, Switzerland, was attended by representatives of the world’s most important water companies. The event was also attended by Al Gore, and the award was collected by Luis Castilla, Managing Director of Acciona Agua.

ACCIONA is one of Spain’s leading corporations, operating in Infrastructure, Energy, and Water Services, in over thirty countries. ACCIONA´s claim: "Pioneers in Development and Sustainability", reflects its company-wide commitment to environmental balance.  ACCIONA - an IBEX-35-listed company (ANA.MC) - is a sector-leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and posted 12.7 billion euros in group revenues in FY08.