Corporate Leaders Group

The Corporate Leaders Group initiative, led by H.R.H. Prince Charles, under the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, brings together a group of European business leaders where the common goal of member companies is their conviction that there is an urgent need to develop new policies with a long-term approach to fight climate change. ACCIONA has been an active member since 2009.

Some of the activities in which ACCIONA has participated:

• ACCIONA participated in drafting the reported entitled 21st century energy: Business reflections on renewables in Europe, which recommends that the European Union implements more ambitious and binding targets in the new Renewable Energy Directive, due to be adopted this year. Currently, the European Commission is proposing a non-binding, EU-level target of 27% renewable energy by 2030. The majority of companies interviewed for the report think the EU should raise the 2030 target.
• ACCIONA signed the EU ETS Market Stability Reserve letter. The European companies and associations signing this letter urge law-makers in the European Council and Parliament to start negotiations urgently and to arrive at an agreement regarding the market stability reserve as soon as possible. With this agreement, said reserve would enter into force in 2017 and the 900 million accumulated emission allowances would be transferred to the reserve immediately-
• ACCIONA endorses the Trillion Tonne Communiqué,   to prevent the cumulative emission of more than a trillion tonnes of carbon. The Communiqué requires governments for a 'rapid and focused response' to the threat posed by rising global carbon emissions, and the 'disruptive climate impacts' inevitably associated with them (www.climatecommuniques.com).
• ACCIONA endorses the "Carbon Price Communiqué" Communiqué that calls on politicians to focus their efforts on setting up a clear framework for carbon emissions pricing. 
• ACCIONA has endorsed The 2°C Challenge Communiqué, led by the Corporate Leaders Network for Climate Action (CLN) and the EU Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change (EUCLG). These organizations, Along with a group of 185 major corporations from 29 countries, call on governments to take strong action on climate change; failure to do so, states the Communiqué, "risks seriously undermining future global prosperity and inflicting significant social, economic and environmental costs on the world".
• ACCIONA is part of the group that officially presented the Cancun Communiqué on climate change to the EU Commissioner for Climate Change, Connie Hedegaard, and Ambassador of Mexico to the EU, H.E. Sandra Fuentes-Berain, in a ceremony also attended by the ambassadors of Mexico, the United States and Canada to the EU.
• ACCIONA endorsed the statement titled Increasing Europe's climate change targets benefits the economy and employment in the EU. Along with 29 other European companies, and as part of an unprecedented initiative, ACCIONA requested an increase in the level of emission reduction in Europe by 2020 to 30 percent of the levels recorded in 1990. Such a reduction would strengthen Europe's economic future, increase the level of employment and eliminate the climate of uncertainty and unpredictability that keeps investors away.