ACCIONA honored with Codespa’s "Solidarity-based Company" award for its "Light in the Home" project

"Light in the Home" uses domestic PV solar units to provide electricity for homes in rural areas of Peru's Cajamarca province. 

Initially aimed at 3,500 families, the program is based on a sustainable management system that pays its own way to enable it to be extended to other beneficiaries.

ACCIONA has been honored with this year's Codespa Award, in the "Solidarity-based Company" category, for its "Light in the Home" project, developed through the Fundación ACCIONA Microenergía (ACCIONA Microenergy Foundation). The award was collected by ACCIONA Chairman & CEO José Manuel Entrecanales, at a ceremony presided by HRH the Prince of Asturias, who is the Chairman of Honor of the Codespa Foundation.

The "Light in the Home" project sets out to facilitate sustainable and affordable access to basic electricity services to dispersed homes in rural areas in Peru's Cajamarca province using domestic PV solar systems. Its initial aim is to bring this system to 3,500 families; however, one of the projects characteristics is a management system that enables it to pay its own way and, eventually, to be extended to new beneficiaries, given that it is based on a system whereby end-users are charged affordable rates that make the project both viable and sustainable in economic terms and also favor the creation of local suppliers with a business model.

On accepting the award, ACCIONA Chairman & CEO José Manuel Entrecanales underlined "the great potential of renewable energies for bringing efficient solutions in those unfortunately numerous regions that have few or no possibilities of access to the electricity grid" and defined access to energy as "a basic right without which it is impossible to bring about development".

Mr. Entrecanales also highlighted that ACCIONA's commitment to the "Light in the Home" program is based on an innovative public-private venture aimed at promoting a favorable framework for offering renewables-based energy through local suppliers.

Codespa is a non-profit organization that sets out to reduce poverty through economic and social development. It organizes the annual Codespa Awards (now into their fifteenth year) which acknowledge the companies, SMEs and employee collectives with the most outstanding commitment to developing countries, as well as honoring media professionals whose work has contributed towards fostering social responsibility and citizen and corporate engagement in the fight on poverty. As well as the "Solidarity-based Company" category, in which ACCIONA took this year's award, there are three other categories, namely "Solidarity-based SME", in which this year's winner is Redyser for its EQUA ("Empresas que ayudan" - Companies that help) initiative; "Corporate Volunteering", which went to the staff of VIPS Group for their project "¡Hoy cocino yo!" (I'm cooking today!), featuring themed contests for people with mental disabilities;  and "Journalism for Development", in which Juan Andrés Siles, a reporter for the "Enfermería TV" channel, took the award for his report "Aprendiendo a cooperar" (Learning to cooperate), based on testimonies by volunteer nurses in Nicaragua.