Hello everybody, good afternoon, and welcome, a very warm welcome to all of you who are present here with us, but also connected online via streaming on YouTube on our portal team tool. So we have many following us, and especially a warm welcome to our external guest, because our Sustainability Day is for the 1st time today open to, let's say, external friends, guests, people who are following our journey to transform our company in a full sustainable company.
These friends are particularly precious for us because they help us in, let's say, interacting, in understanding other points of view in order to be always, let's say, aligned to the public interest. Because, you know, sustainability is, we think inside MAIRE is a very strong cultural change that every of us has to embrace. The dialogue with the points of view external from the company is fruitful for us to understand what to accelerate, what to change, and what to put under discussion.
Because the system is a trend that is now heavy and strongly pushing companies to, let's say, accept also public responsibility, you know, not pure business only, but more and more responsible to what is our impact outside the company. Let's say business interest and public interest has to be more and more aligned. This is our effort and a strong journey of transformation. Thanks to all of you who are always participating to this, because we don't succeed if we don't engage all the different functions, all the different responsibilities, all our competencies within the group to transform ourselves in a different way.
So we have now the possibility to listen to the contribution of our Group CEO, Alessandro Bernini, who is now flying to China for a business urgent necessity, but he would like, he's in presence with us, and so it's time to listen to his warm, let's say, opening remarks. Please.
Dear colleagues, good morning to everybody. I was forced to leverage on our technological platform to be with you today because unfortunately it was impossible to delay a meeting in Shanghai, which by the way is going to take place right now. However, this appointment is too important not to give at least a message to all of you about my strong personal commitment on the topics which we will discuss today. Who is speaking is one of the most skeptical persons about the ESG principles and their effectiveness. But as we are used to say, only the stupids don't change their mind.
My mindset on sustainability has changed dramatically by acknowledging and recognizing that all our stakeholders are more and more requesting a sustainable way to do our business. Working in a sustainability way is no more an option, and every day we have clear evidence of that. But we should see it as a constant occasion to mature a future-proof mindset essential to face the complexity of uncertain scenarios and seize new opportunities in the international panorama, as well as be aware we play a more complex role at local level.
MAIRE is putting in practice its own sustainability vision in a way that is neither rhetorical nor conventional, through very concrete actions and a constant alignment with the industrial strategy. And today you will have tangible proof of that. That's our way to make sustainability for real. That's how we create value by doing business, how we manage economic, natural, and social resources.
We are increasingly not only a reliable industrial partner for our business partner, but we have also the responsibility to enhance the potential of the territories we operate in, both socially and economically, and to preserve the balance of their ecosystem. This implies a constant exercise of listening and interacting with the stakeholders representing different business and non-business interests, getting closer to their point of view and understanding how we can mutually benefit from each other's peculiarities.
I am just back from Kazakhstan, where our group is trying to transform into reality some business opportunities, and in doing our best to be successful, we are interacting very closely with the local government representatives, from the president to the prime minister and the top management of the local-based energy companies. All of them have no doubts about our technological knowledges and industrial expertise, so they don't need special assurances about our capabilities.
They want to be assured that we are ready to get on board local personnel, local supply chain, and local enterprises for the construction activities. In other words, we are requested to help the country in evolving its social and economic context while preserving an ecosystem which for this population has a sort of religious content. Of course, the principle of sustainability from a social and environmental perspective must cope with the expectation of an economic sustainability.
This one representing the structural lever for growth and the solid governance as the enabler to produce long-lasting value and safeguard in the long term. We can keep doing it with the everyday dedication of a large team of people and with the participation and alignment of all employees on common values as the most effective booster to move from strategy to action. So now I leave the floor to all the colleagues which will discuss and show you their experience and share with us the real value of sustainability. Enjoy our 2nd Sustainability Day. Thank you and see you soon.
Thank you. Thanks to Alessandro for his words. Neither rhetoric nor convention, he said, and this is, I think, is a good slogan for the work we are doing every day at MAIRE for this transformation. And of course, this sustainability is for a group like us also a strong opportunity in terms of new business, in terms of, let's say, empower all our clients in order to accelerate their decarbonization plans.
So it's a strong opportunity for our technology, for our engineering, for our execution, let's say, skills to contribute concretely to change the world, to change our productivity systems that all over the world since a long time are based on hydrocarbons. So the transformation is progressive, is difficult, and is at different stages of quickness depending on geographies. That's why I would like to ask Fabio Fritelli , who is NEXTCHEM Managing Director and Group CFO, to deliver a small contribution about how sustainability for us is also a leverage towards the market. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Carlo. I'll go live. I have not prepared any speech. I think the subject of this meeting today is very much something we need to feel inside. So, there's nothing I have prepared, but just share with you some of the ideas I have with regard to sustainability and the ideas I have with regard to the industrial transformation that the world will have to face in order to tackle climate change, pollution, and all the rest. You know, I've been into the financial world for most of my career, joining industrial groups only recently.
I've been with MAIRE for the past 10 years, and now I've been given by Sandro, by Fabrizio, the opportunity to lead NextChem. I was not as skeptical as Sandro at the beginning, but I was skeptical myself in the sense that I think the way the world has approached sustainability a few years ago, because the real boost to sustainability has come in the aftermath of COVID. The world has stopped, taken a deep breath, and understood that it was needed something different from the way we were operating before. It's very recent. I do believe it was done in the wrong way.
I do believe there are a lot of topics that will have to be addressed. I was listening to the news yesterday. China, that we think is by far the biggest polluter in the world, has only recently reached Europe. So if we take the past 150 years, Europe has been by far the biggest polluter and the biggest CO2 emitter in the world, and China has just reached the level of emissions that Europe has created in the past 150 years.
So when talking about the energy transition and pretending that certain geographies, which include China, India, not to forget the United States, we need to also put it in the picture of the overall global development of the world. Now, why all this preamble? This preamble to say that the energy transition will be a very long journey. We all know it. I'm saying something quite banal.
When looking at NextChem and accepting to become the Managing Director of NextChem, it's because I think NextChem is the best possible, let me not use weapon, because in these times weapon is not the word I like to use, the best possible tool to engage ourselves in the energy transition. I cannot think of any other setup as flexible as NextChem to be able to contribute to the energy transition and to a way of doing things which is more sustainable than we have done to date.
It's flexible because it's leveraging upon its competencies of the past and building new concepts which need to be sustainable in environmental terms, but also in economic terms. Otherwise, simply the client will not be buying into it. I don't think that there's any other company, and I'm saying what I'm saying with the responsibility of the role that I'm now recovering. I don't think there's any other company in the market right now which has the same tools, the same capabilities of NextChem. We are extremely flexible.
We can keep on experimenting new formulas while we live out of the products which have been done for decades through the fossil fuels. We are fully fledged to be a player in the low carbon industry, which is today, is not tomorrow, is today. And we are investing all our efforts and skills, technological skills to find new solutions for the future.
So this is to say that when I meet with the financial community, which I keep on meeting, it's my problem, they tell us, "You guys, so NextChem, you guys have a lot of competitors, but you don't have peers." I don't know if you understand the difference. We have a lot of companies who can sell one of our products, but we don't have any other company that can sell all our products together. And this is unique. So the idea we had a few years ago to set up NextChem to be instrumental to the decarbonization, hence to the sustainability, is definitely working out.
Two more things, and then I'll leave the floor because it was only five minutes, and it's not, it's plenty of colleagues who will tell you way more than I can tell you. The financial community, for once in their life, have been useful in this sustainability journey. And believe me, when I say once in their life, I'm serious about it, they are always bringing problems to the economy, but this time around they are pushing industrial companies to speed up their sustainability process. You know that we have a lot of debt outstanding on the market, which is linked to our Scope 1, 2, and recently Scope 3 objectives.
My colleagues will tell you more about this in the future. So we are also helped by a financial community who will support the initiatives that we will take. And believe me, this is absolutely the case. The real problem is not doing things, it's convincing clients that those things are also economically viable, and we have plenty of resources to deploy this new concept.
One last thing, and then I'll leave the stage to my colleagues. Sustainability, I think, is no longer and will no longer be a way of behaving. I think sustainability is becoming a way of being, is becoming a way of looking at things. And Europe, old Europe, where most of us come from, should take this as the real opportunity. I don't think there's any other place at this point in time where there's more need in economic terms of the energy transition as much as Europe. We read every day that a number of industries are suffering.
You read on the press how the chemical industry is shutting down in Europe because it's no longer competitive. Then sustainability can be a paradox, can become a new economic paradigm for a number of industries which are suffering in these days. I will stop here. I don't think I can add more. There's a lot of colleagues who will follow after me. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you, Fabio. Thank you for your view also concerning the financial community and how they look at us. As you said, not like, let's say, we don't have peers, we have competitors. So this is something that is distinctive for MAIRE and is something on which we have to build in every day, in the situation and in the work that we have in front of our table. Every day we start our working day. So of course, this Sustainability Day is sustainable in itself because we tried, of course, to compensate, let's say, emissions and to be, let's say, careful concerning all our wastes generated by the event itself.
And this is just a small reference to give you this final message that is in every moment and in every single specific and maybe concrete moment of our working day that we should try to think differently in a sustainable way. But much better than me, I ask Ilaria Catastini, who is our Group Head of Sustainability, to join me on the stage. And I leave in Ilaria's hands the description of the agenda inside our detailed and very tough program and to, of course, introduce all the other guests. Thank you, Ilaria.
Thank you. I'm so proud to introduce MAIRE Sustainability Journey. It is a journey across areas, as you will have understood, ESG, environment, social governance, but mainly across many, many initiatives, concrete initiatives in each of these areas. Then it is also a journey across a bold corporate commitment and personal efforts of hundreds of colleagues that work together, and it is a very important thing for us. Then it is also a journey across geographical areas. In the presentations that you will see, you will note some visuals of the locations where our initiatives have their impact.
In some cases, you will see worldwide because the impact is worldwide. In other cases, you will see some precise countries. It is also a journey between, on one side, KPIs, targets, results, concrete figures, and on the other side, stories. Because today we would also like to tell some stories. Our sustainability strategy has been shared with 22 external stakeholders, some of them are here today, with very deep one-to-one interviews. And it has also been shared with 1,600 employees, our colleagues. So we think that it is a bold journey.
I will facilitate the E like Environment section, and then I will leave the stage to other colleagues for the other two sections. And now, please let me introduce the speakers of the E section. And please, colleagues, if you want to come, Maurizio Rigo lio, Group Environmental Sustainability Manager, Pilar Molina, Group Supply Chain Transformation Head of Department, Paola Sclafani, Energy Transition Portfolio Manager, Lorena Ioli, Environmental Sustainability Manager, Mayra Alverà, Environmental Sustainability Junior Engineer, Marina Blancafort, Environmental Sustainability Junior Engineer.
A nd Daniela Quintero Castro, Environmental Sustainability Junior Analyst. Welcome on the stage. You see how diverse we are. So my colleagues will talk about climate, water, biodiversity, circularities. Please listen to them. We will begin with climate with Maurizio Rig olio, Pilar Molina, and Paola Sclafani. We will talk about emissions, one, two, three, and four. Please, Maurizio.
Good afternoon, everyone. I am very glad to be here and to present the decarbonization strategy of MAIRE Group. MAIRE Group has since years a decarbonization plan, which is called Net Zero Plan, which has the aim to reach the carbon neutrality for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission by 2029 and by 2050 for the Scope 3 emissions. The mid-targets of this plan, which are also linked to a sustainable bond, are related to a reduction of the 35% of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission within 2025 and the reduction of the 9% of the Scope 3 intensity by 2025.
The Scope 1 emission are the one related to the fuel combustion, so the direct greenhouse gases emission, while the Scope 2 emission are the one related to the purchase of electricity. What are the levers on which we are achieving this reduction?
The levers are an increase of the energy efficiency through hardware and digital intervention and the switch to fossil fuel energy to renewable energy through green energy procurement in our office and in our site, through the connection to permanent grid of our temporary facilities at site, and through the installation of solar plants, and in this video, we will announce the installation of a solar plant in a Rhourde El Baguel site in Algeria.
Hi everybody. I'm Martino Ancona, construction engineer in the Rhourde El Baguel project here in Algeria. Behind me, our solar plant, already fully operational. This plant supplies up to 300 kW of green energy for our offices, warehouse, and living camp. Let's make our construction sites green.
Thanks to Martino Ancona who is connected online, and thanks to all our construction teams that are supporting us in our sustainability journey around the world. In order to achieve all these actions in a structural way, from this year, we started a net zero project, which will allow us to keep the strict control of the achieved results, the timeline, and the relevant required budget. But the Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are only the 2% of the emissions generated by our group.
The remaining 98% are related to the Scope 3 emissions, so the emissions connected to our value chain. And to describe how MAIRE Group is managing the estimation and the reduction of Scope 3 emissions, I will leave the word to my colleague, Pilar Molina.
Thank you. Thank you, Maurizio. Good afternoon to everybody. So 98% is quite a challenge. This 98% is mainly formed by our technical materials and the transportation of these materials up to the site premises for construction purposes. So how we did approach this journey? With a top-down and a bottom-up approach. So for the top-down, we have leveraged on industry questionnaires, which is a standard solution, and through these questionnaires, we can have an updated overview on how our supply chain is developing solutions and is going through this decarbonization journey.
But on the top-down, we also have one distinctive asset that is our data. So we have built and certified this MAIRE Hybrid Method that provided the weight of our materials and its composition returns us a calculation of the greenhouse gases emissions of our project materials. But let's move to the bottom-up. On the bottom-up, we are working in this initiative with selected main suppliers and working with them to understand through their advanced methodologies how they do with their life cycle assessment, LCA, and their Environmental Product Declaration.
While doing this, we have important data, not only their primary data, but how we can contribute as a group on their decarbonization journey with our solutions from NextChem, as Fabio was mentioning earlier, so this is also part of the solutions that we bring on this path. We have started with technological equipment such as pumps, columns, compressors, rotary feeders, and medium voltage insulated switchgears, and from next year, we will start with the bulk materials, addressing concrete and carbon steel, and this implies also, of course, piping and steel structures.
Let's move now to the transportation, and here, the approach is slightly different. Here, we leverage on MAIRE Group's digital framework that is fully integrated with the best-of-breed solutions that provided the weight of our materials. The journey from the delivery point to the site premises and the means of transport returns us with the carbon footprint of the transportation.
So if you allow me one more minute, Maurizio and Ilaria, I'd like also to share this initiative that we have implemented this year together with the financial team. And it's another collaboration initiative with our suppliers through that access to our online ESG questionnaire. And provided they have completed it, they can access to privileged financial conditions with our ESG-linked financial program. Thank you.
Thank you, Pilar. Up to now, we have described how we are managing the reduction of emission in our group, including our value chain. But our journey through decarbonization does not stop here because we want also to answer to the expectation of our clients and our stakeholders who are interested in what MAIRE can do on the decarbonization of our society through its solutions and its technologies. And so we have issued a framework regarding the avoided emission. And to describe this methodological framework and its implementation in MAIRE Group business line, I leave the word to Paola Sclafani.
Thank you, Maurizio. Good afternoon. So with Scope 4, we are changing the paradigm from a company as source of emissions to a company as source of solutions. Why? Because Scope 4, concerning the avoided emission, focuses on our products, our solutions, our innovative technologies, and on how much these can contribute to the decarbonization of society. Definition: Scope 4 avoided emission is the difference between the greenhouse gases emissions, which occur or will occur if a product or service is implemented, our solution, and the emissions which would occur in the absence of the solution.
These emissions are not our emissions. They will be reported separated from Scope 1, 2, and 3. These are the emissions that our clients will be saving thanks to our products, thanks to our technologies, our sustainable solutions, our low-carbon products. Today, there is no agreed or recognized standard for assessment and reporting of Scope 4. For this reason, MAIRE Group has been developing in-house a framework and a methodology for Scope 4 assessment, calculation, and reporting. This methodology is completed and finalized and is currently under critical review by an expert 3rd party.
The key element of the methodology is the life cycle assessment that we perform for our solution and for the reference scenario. We calculate in this way the emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent. The difference is the avoided emissions. In this case, we have also introduced some correction factors for our solution result to consider the technology readiness level as well as the market uncertainties in order to avoid overestimating avoided emission in a phase of development of technology development, which occurs sometimes.
We implement this methodology to both our business units, the Sustainable Technology Solutions business unit dedicated to new technologies addressing energy transition, and also to the Integrated EPC business unit dedicated to engineering, procurement, construction of complex process plans. In this case, the solutions we assess are focused on energy efficiency improvement, power consumption reduction optimization, and fossil fuel saving replacement.
In addition to the methodology, we are also developing a tool, a physical tool that we will deliver to our clients to monitor the Scope 4 avoided emissions to support and reinforce our clients' journey towards decarbonization. For year 2024, we are implementing the methodology on a few selected technologies, one for each business line in STS. So for low carbon energy vectors, sorry, for sustainable fertilizer and nitrogen-based fuels, we have selected STAMI Urea.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you, Paola. We have found this solution because, you know, we have a broadcasting agenda, and so we have to run. But now we talk about water. Lorena, Mayra, please.
Good afternoon, everyone. Today, we would present to you our progress in water cluster. In the slide in front of you, you can see water mapping tools. The little dots represent our construction sites, while the different color is the degree of physical risk that are calculated based on flood risk, water availability, water quality risk, and drought risk. Our task force used this map to develop solutions to reduce our risk. But what is our task force? Our Water Task Force was created this year with the objective to develop qualitative and quantitative targets to implement, reuse, recycle, and water monitoring.
We also develop continuously ideas that are collected in a water idea register that are further analyzed to verify their applicability. So we are working to develop solutions able to help us to reduce our water in our construction sites and offices. For example, we used the reverse osmosis system in some sites to obtain drinking water that we will use to obtain water that can be used in our construction sites. But our attention is not only for construction activity, but also to propose solutions for our plant operation and for our client. I leave the floor to Mayra Alverà to explain a real application.
Good afternoon, everyone. So on the map, you can see there is a dot pointing towards Ras Laffan Water Project. But what is Ras Laffan Water Project? So in this project, we use a water-positive approach to design and create a sewage advanced treatment system that recovers sanitary water produced by our construction camp. But what is a water-positive approach? It is an approach that balances the withdrawal of water and the discharge of the water to nature. And how do we implement this into our recovered sanitary water? So our recovered sanitary water is then directed to three streams.
1st, for watering the trees. 2nd, for sprinkler systems. And 3rd, for irrigation of green space around the construction camp. The highlight of this project is that we reuse the recovered sanitary water for watering the native tree seeds that we have planted around the construction camp area. In this way, we're not only replenishing the aquifer through groundwater recharge, but we also support and promote the growth of our trees.
Our goal next year is to finalize our water target, especially around water recycling and water consumption, and also we aim to create policy based on the target that we set. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. From water to biodiversity, please, Marina.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Another very important pillar in environmental sustainability is biodiversity. The reason why this is important is because we, as MAIRE, need to ensure we are not creating damages to the environment. We will see that through two biodiversity projects we are developing in the area of the United Arab Emirates, which are the preservation of the Houbara Protected Area and the plantation of mangrove seeds. In one of our main projects, the Hail and Ghasha projects, we have some export pipelines that will pass close to a protected area.
This protected area, the Houbara Protected Area, is a diverse desert environment that is the house of the Houbara Bustard, this bird you see here. This protected area also is the house of many wildlife. When we're talking about responsibility as MAIRE, we are referring to the fact that we need to protect these endangered birds, and we should not disturb it during our activities. How do we do that? Before developing any project, we conduct an environmental impact assessment. In this assessment, we identify in the Houbara Protected Area which might be the potential impacts in that area.
When we identify the impacts, we define very clear mitigation measures so we minimize our impact as much as possible. For example, we identify that Houbara have their breeding period from January to July. We impose seasonal restrictions during that period in the protected area. That means that we stop our construction works so they don't disturb the birds during their reproduction.
Also, we have mitigation measures that involve training all of our workers so they know about the Houbara, they understand the importance of it, and for example, they don't damage their nests while they are in the construction site. We also have mitigation measures that regard light and noise. We try to minimize nighttime working so we don't disturb the Houbara bird and also all the wildlife present in the Houbara Protected Area. So these are examples of how we can prevent damages to the environment. But we, as MAIRE, can also contribute positively to biodiversity.
And we see that through one biodiversity project that we're studying that will be the plantation of mangrove seeds. In case you don't know about mangroves, mangroves are a kind of tree that grows on the coast of many countries, among them the Emirates. These trees have many benefits for the environment and for biodiversity. Apart that they capture CO2, they provide food and habitat to many species. For example, small fish can use their roots underwater to protect themselves from predators. Also, other species can use mangroves as a natural barrier, so it protects them from waves or storms.
And finally, mangroves prevent coastal erosion because they can collect sediments from rivers and seas. For that reason is that with just one seed of mangrove, we can make a very meaningful impact towards biodiversity. And that's why we want to keep exploring biodiversity initiatives like this one so we can preserve the environment while we reach our industrial goals, and we also create sustainable industrial practices. Thank you.
Thank you. It is wonderful, isn't it? So now, circularity with Daniela. Thank you.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to present to you the circular economy levels of MAIRE. We developed a three-level framework in order to cover not only our perimeter, but also the whole value chain. So the 1st one is our internal practices. Then here we have more control and a higher power to act directly. Then we have a 2nd level that is focused on the upstream of the value chain, which is our suppliers. And then we have the level focused on the downstream, which are our clients. More into detail on the 1st level that you see on the 1st circle, we have our offices and construction sites.
Here, one key activity in order to minimize our environmental impact is effective waste management. Other key initiatives that we have already implemented this year are introducing water dispensers, waste separation, and also digitalization of processes. We want to focus also on the construction sites as they represent over 95% of the total waste generation we have. So for this, we consider our waste as well as the waste of our subcontractors. For this, we are developing a study on four main countries that represent the majority of our business today, given the industrial projects that we have in these areas.
You were able to see the countries on the previous slide. These countries were Algeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. This study focuses on two main aspects. The 1st one is understanding the picture and the context of the country into recycling and circular economy. So for this, we study their infrastructure as well as their rates and targets that they set at a national level given recycling and circular economy.
In parallel, we're working on our data and our proxies of the ways we will generate and the waste streams. This way, we can set feasible recycling targets in these regions and then targets at a corporate level. This research is also thanks to the collaboration of our region and areas vice presidents and offices. Now, moving to the circle in the middle, the level of the upstream, we have our suppliers. Here, MAIRE wants to collaborate closely with its suppliers in order to have sustainable practices along the value chain.
For this, we want to promote the use of recycled, innovative, and sustainable materials, use circular economy principles like eco-design, and also an emphasis on packaging reduction, as reducing packaging means also minimizing the waste on our construction sites. Having these collaborations with our partners, we're able to have feasible strategies for recycling, recovering, and other circular economy strategies that can help us have a more sustainable value chain. Finally, we move to the last level, which is our client circularity.
Here, we want to leverage on NEXTCHEM as it offers a great portfolio of technologies. Within these technologies, we have the recycling technologies that can offer upcycling, depolymerization, and waste-to-chemical, between many other technologies. With this, we want to not only offer our clients the possibility to have circularity, but also other sustainable alternatives, while we also increase the circularity within MAIRE.
To conclude, having these strategies and implementing more into the circular economy aspect, we are able to customize MAIRE's strategies in different regions, considering the context and other specific aspects in order to maximize circularity in different areas. Thank you very much.
Please keep it. Well, stay with me while we try to connect to Mrs. Giuseppina Sordi. Giuseppina, buongiorno. Welcome to our event. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, Edoardo Zanchini, who was the other speaker that we had on our agenda, had an inconvenience. We don't know. Maybe he will reach us, but in the meantime, we will leave more time to Milan, because Giuseppina Sordi is Director of Energy and Climate Office of the Municipality of Milan, and we would like to understand together with her what is the Municipality of Milan thinking and doing on climate strateg.
S o a couple of questions for a very short speech that we have asked to Mrs. Sordi. The 1st question is, how did your city decide to afford the climate challenge of mitigation and adaptation? Because we have to remind that for a town, for a city, for a state, there is also the big problem of adaptation. Please.
Good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for the opportunity, but what we tried to do was to think in a different way, differently from the previous program. We had the Sustainable Energy Action Plan, which had a lot of measures, specific measures for the reduction of the emissions, and our goal was to think to have another approach, a wider approach, with the intention to build a framework for every intervention and project of the municipality in order to align all the strategies.
S o the idea was not only to work on the climate challenge and the adaptation challenge, but also to include the problem of the air quality that in our context is very, very important, so the idea of ensuring coherence across all the municipalities' intervention is very important because this is a real union of intent of the complex municipality.
The plan that we approved two years ago has three challenges, so it aims to achieve the compliance with the EU air quality standards and also to reduce carbon emissions by 2030, and the reference period is 2005, and limiting the increase in temperature, the local temperature, within two degrees. It is a very structured plan that has five areas, the dimensions. The 1st is air quality and circular economy. The 2nd is mobility.
The 3rd is on energy, and the fourth on adaptation, and the 5th that is very important is the participation and communication with citizens and businesses and enterprise stakeholders in general. The plan has more different goals, 19 goals and 49 actions, and works on several areas, so just, for example, the urban planning, the public space design, the building design, accessibility of services, and mobility.
And also, every action is seen through the lens of equity and inclusion. And this is very important because from this approach, now we are working on other projects such as, for example, the Energy Poverty Plan.
Thank you very much, Giuseppina. Maybe we have Edoardo Zanchini. Hi, Edoardo. Thank you for coming. I know that you were rushing to reach us. Thank you very much. So I repeat the same question to you. Maybe we don't have the time to make the 2nd question, but I'm very happy to have you anyway. How did your city, how did Rome decide to afford the climate challenge of mitigation and adaptation?
Thank you. Sorry for the delay. I was in a meeting, as you already said. The city decided to choose climate change as one of the priorities. In a way, not only to tackle these issues, but even to renovate and innovate the city. One of the 1st decisions that the Mayor Gualtieri did was to create an office that had to coordinate adaptation and mitigation policies. In this year, we will approve the two strategies for mitigation and adaptation. We will approve our Climate City Contract, as Milano already did.
We will approve in December our adaptation strategy. In this way, we would have a clear idea on which are the priorities, which are the measures. We already started working on these issues with the resources of the Recovery Plan, even of the 2025 Jubilee. So now we have a coordination between all the different offices and a clear idea of what we have to do. Obviously, we even need all the city on board. This is why we decided on the adaptation strategy and on the Climate City Contract to involve stakeholders. And we are very happy on this because it has been very interesting.
We will present this next year at the beginning of 2025. But many stakeholders like you and many others that obviously are in the capital of Italy are interested in working together. And I think this is one of the most important results of the work that we are doing because in the next year, we have to accelerate, but we even have to involve people, stakeholders. We all have to understand which are the most effective policies that we have to tackle and to understand even how to find resources to work all together, European level, national level, and the city and the communities and all the organizations.
Thank you. We are very keen, of course, to cooperate both with Milan and Rome. We are ready. I thank you very much, really, really, and have a good work, have a good path for decarbonization.
Thank you.
Thank you. So thank you to our speakers. Please, you can reach your seats. And please. And we will move through the S section, S like social. I invite my colleagues, Sara Frassine, Group Development and Compensation Vice President, and Maria Selli, Group Health, Safety and Environment and Social Accountability and Project Quality Vice President. Please.
Hello, everyone. Social, as Ilaria mentioned before, is like the S, sorry. The S is like social, Ilaria mentioned before. Social means focus on relation with people and also with the impact that the organization itself has on the society. Social covers all the topics related to human rights, health and safety, working conditions, labor relations, and also, of course, the relation with the clients and also with the community. In S, MAIRE is not only that. It's also the continuous investments on the hiring people, hiring competencies and talents from the market.
The headcount at the end of September 2024 exceeded 9,300 employees. So more than 17% with respect to the last year. So growth is also not only investment from the market, but also from the development of our people internally. So we invest several hours about training. And in the 1st half of 2024, we spent more than 63,000 training hours for the professional development of our people. In this figure, it's not included all the training about HSE that Maria in a while will explain to us.
So last year, during the Sustainability Day, we announced a very strong training plan for a deeper knowledge on our sustainability strategy and also related to D&I topics. For all the employees, strong plan, I know. I know very well. But at the end, nowadays, we can do that. We can say that the knowledge about our sustainability strategy is really better understood internally to create a more inclusive corporate culture. And today, I'm really glad to announce a 2nd program about the D&I, so related specifically to the D&I development plan dedicated to our people coordinators.
So we are speaking about 700 managers of our group. We were invited in this special training program that has the idea behind to create, to equip these people coordinators with tools, instruments, and also confidence to weave D&I in their managerial practices every day with the people, to reinforce the best approach to manage diversity, because this is really pivotal. And this is why we decided to invest in this training plan for our people coordinators. The development program will be available by the middle of December, and will last 15 hours per person.
I know also in this case a strong effort for us, but we believe that this is really important for our culture. We would like to experiment with new training techniques, so we will organize a session through workshops environment where people can be really active, really proactive during the discussion. We would like to invest on peer-to-peer learning, so the sharing of experiences, sharing of ideas and point of views will be really an occasion to learn from each others.
Last, but not the least, role plays and case studies to take advantage of the real case scenarios in order to apply theoretical concepts to the real life of the daily life in our group. I would like to conclude with a present for you. We used several times this sentence during the training.
Diversity is being invited to the party, but inclusion is being asked to dance, so a message of proactivity, a message to be really an actor on this path, on this journey, so we decided also to integrate this kind of message into our motto, and another present for you. Inclusion is a way of being. Integration is a way of doing. This is our motto, so this is a journey on D&I for MAIRE. Maria, it's your turn.
Thank you, Sara. Good afternoon to everyone. As Sara mentioned, training is fundamental in order to grow up our resources. For what concerns safety, which is a core value for MAIRE Group, we are performing training to all our employees and our subcontractors. And as we can see, we have important figures on safety training and social accountability training.
Considering the cutoff of the end of September, we have performed more than 2,900,000 training hours. Our forecast for the end of the year is to supersede 3,500,000 training hours, which is 40% more training from what we have performed in the last year. We are talking about important numbers. For what concerns safety results, we have achieved important results on our MAIRE Group. Our Lost Time Indicator and also Lost Record Indicator is more than three times better than the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers benchmark.
Of course, we are not happy to have achieved this result, and we do not stay like this, but we are trying to always improve our safety performance. Now we are asking how we can improve these results. MAIRE results are significant and indicative because we don't adopt only the correct methodology, and we don't have immense commitment on safety, but we are involving all our people that take part in our daily activities on our construction site. MAIRE's target is to humanize HSE. For us, safety doesn't mean only compliance with the rules and the laws in the countries where we are going to build our plant.
It concerns our people who, through their behavior, their habits, their values, their skills, build the real safety in our construction sites and build and bring the results that follows. For this, we have implemented new initiatives on our group with a strong focus on awareness, on behavior, and involvement of all our stakeholders. One of these programs is the Behavior-Based Safety Program that later on our colleague Stefano Margozzi will give us more insight.
Last but not least, we are working together with our IT team and Michele and Mariella in order to bring artificial intelligence to support safety on our construction sites. Artificial Intelligence will be essential for the HSE in the coming years because it addressed challenging safety performance with a higher efficiency and accuracy, and it brings a range of solutions to enhance HSE, to improve our risk management compliance, and predictive analytics for risk prevention. Thanks all of you for your time.
So Maria, we can ask some colleagues to come with us on the stage. And I'm really glad to ask Francesca Familiari, Group Compliance, Ethics, Diversity, and Inclusion Head of Department, and Brijesh Shah to stay with us. Brijesh is the Legal and Corporate Affairs Head of Department of our TCMPL.
We ask also to Stefano Margozzi, our Group HSE Head of Department, and Carmelo Pellicanò, our Construction HSE Director for the Hail and Ghasha Project. Valentina Grieco, Group Social Sustainability Manager, and Mark Sleijser, Marketing Head of Department, Stamicarbon. Also I'm asking Annalisa Del Pia, our Group Institutional and International Relations and Clients and Systems Head of Department, and Irene Micelotta, our Group Security Vice President. Are you ready? Yes? No? Francesca, it's your turn. So please.
Thank you, Sara, and good afternoon to everyone. Today I want to convince you that the sentences that you should see behind me, okay, are true. I will do that speaking about why D&I is essential, what are we doing about D&I, and the last D&I initiatives. Why D&I is essential in a multicultural group as MAIRE Group is, I face every day with different perspectives. I have learned that D&I is essential for improving our work environment because it creates innovations, values, and trust. When we trust each other, we work together more efficiently, we communicate openly, and we feel committed.
D&I increases our productivity and reduces turnover. What are we doing about D&I? Several initiatives. Sara mentioned D&I training, but we have also a D&I working group that is a multidisciplinary team that is dedicated to the development of D&I initiatives for the group. We have a flourishing program for the development of young professionals, and we promote women and people with different ages and competencies to the Board of Directors and Board of Statutory Auditors of the companies of our group.
So these are some of the initiatives that confirm that MAIRE is committed to value diversity and create a work environment that is safe, transparent, and welcoming, so we must protect this work environment. That's why yesterday the Board of Directors of MAIRE approved a global anti-harassment policy that is a policy that rejects and condemns all forms of violence, discrimination, and harassment at the workplace, and this policy is built on three key measures: training, listening, and helping.
Training, we must prevent bad action. That's why we provide D&I health and safety training. Listening, we have whistle-blowing channels for everyone inside and outside our organization. And helping, we manage the investigating process for any complaints we receive, ensuring it is accurate, timely, and impartial. So in conclusion, prevention measures are the key, but the positive behaviors of all of us are the power for creating a safe work environment. Thank you. And I want to give the floor to Brijesh from Tecnimont India. Thank you.
Thank you, Francesca. Good afternoon, everyone. As you are aware, Tecnimont Private Limited India is the engineering hub of MAIRE's Group. The employee headcount is in excess of 3,200 plus employees. Tecnimont India represents close to 35% of the total global workforce of MAIRE Group. Since 2014, Tecnimont India has implemented a policy in compliance with the Indian law to prevent and address the instance of sexual harassment of women at the workplace. The policy aims to create a safe working environment by protecting women and ensuring effective complaint redressal mechanisms.
An internal committee of employees led by a senior woman employee, including external legal experts, handles all these complaints impartially and reports their findings and recommendations to the Board of Directors for requisite disciplinary actions as may be required. Regular training and awareness programs are conducted for all the committee members, as well as all employees in general, to sensitize them about the issue, to keep them informed about the legal provisions and the reporting mechanism.
A policy has indeed formalized a high standard of workplace culture for Tecnimont India. India, being a well-known multicultural country, we at Tecnimont India adhere to the fundamental principle of religious diversity to prioritize creating a workplace culture of freedom, respect, and dignity for all employees. Most importantly, this includes a complete rejection of discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, in selection and recruitment of employees. Talking about the gender diversity, Tecnimont India is improving its ratio of female employees versus male employees on a year-on-year basis.
As of 31st October 2024, the appointment of female employees in Tecnimont India has gone up by more than 21% as compared to the previous year. We in Tecnimont India believe that acknowledging and celebrating gender diversity is most crucial for creating an inclusive workplace. A truly diverse work environment not only facilitates equal representation of various genders, but also promotes a work culture of respect, non-discrimination, and ensuring that all employees feel comfortable in expressing their gender identities.
We at Tecnimont India believe that D&I efforts are now a must-have to retain and attract talents within the organization, to strengthen the relationship with the client and customer, and for achieving long-term success. Thank you.
Thank you, Francesca. Thank you, Brijesh, and I would like to invite Stefano to give us some insights on behavior-based safety programs, Stefano.
Thank you, Maria, and good afternoon, everybody. I will talk about health and safety, and in particular, I will talk about the Behavior-Based Safety Program, the BBS. So, as Maria mentioned, safety is a core value for MAIRE. And we are all involved in reaching our common goal, which is to create a safe work environment. But what is fundamental is that all our strengths, all our actions regarding safety involve not only our workers, but also the workers of all our subcontractors. But let's see what is the BBS. BBS is a proactive approach to improve workplace safety, focusing on the behavior of employees.
And why we decided to adopt it on MAIRE? And there were too many reasons that led us up to adopt it, but let's focus on the 1st two. Even if our safety results are very good, we have always to improve them. The 2nd one is that the few events we recorded are all behavioral. Therefore, if we can establish what are safe and unsafe behavior, and if we will be able to intercept and recognize them on our workplace, for sure we can transform the unsafe behavior into a safe behavior. Let's see what we can expect and obtain from the BBS program, the main expectation. Employee training and engagement.
We will train all employees on BBS practices, observation techniques, and how they can receive and provide feedback. We will involve and engage all of them into such a program because in that way, we can build with them our safety culture. Define safe and unsafe behavior that can have an impact on safety on our workplace, tailored to our specific tasks and environment, and then obtain a good number of observations and data collection we can work on.
The next one regarding the positive feedback and reinforcement, and that is crucial to improve our safety performance because whenever we provide positive feedback and positive reinforcement to employees that have safe behavior at work, they will continue to have such behavior, and then they will be a safety influencer for all the other workers.
The last one, but not for importance, is that if we integrate the BBS with the already existing safety program, we can enhance the overall effectiveness of workplace safety by combining the traditional safety practices like the risk assessment, job hazard analysis, with the behavior-focused strategies. For sure, we will obtain a really good result. Let's see where we are with the BBS in MAIRE. We had more than 3,000 training hours, and all of our HSE managers have been trained with BBS.
We already started BBS in MyRep last, that is our recycling plastic plant, and we are starting BBS at our construction site. Now I finish, and I would like to close my speech with a sentence which I really strongly believe that is, "A safe world is a sustainable world, and a sustainable world is a safe world." Thank you.
Thank you, Stefano. Now I would like to ask Carmelo to give us how we can mitigate the climate change impact on our people at our construction sites. Carmelo.
Thank you very much, Maria, and good afternoon to everybody. I would like to start with this news released by Reuters on November 7, 2024. It says that this year is virtually certain that 2023 will be eclipsed completely because of the world's warmest record since the record began, so this means that our expert is warning us that the impact of climate change is increasingly impacting the health and safety of our workers in our construction site because of heat stress, but what is heat stress?
Heat stress is a condition in which our body is no longer able to cool down, and this causes an incredible load of pressure on our workers, both physically and mentally, so now let's see what are the impacts and what are the factors for heat stress. We can say that its ambient temperature is one of the impacting elements and factors for its stress, as well as humidity. Now, we are building one of the biggest plants ever built in Tecnimont, the Hail and Ghasha project. We have this project executed in the Emirates. It is a place where in the summertime, there is a high temperature.
The temperature can go above 50 degrees Celsius, and the humidity can go above 70%-100%, and the work activity that people perform is another factor which impacts the stress, as well as pre-existing medical conditions for the workers, such as hypertension and other sickness. We can also eliminate the inadequate fluid intake of the people, which by itself can shut down the body of working, so how can we mitigate such impact on the people, on our workers?
Let me say, 1st of all, that Tecnimont considers health and safety as a core value, as been repeated here from my colleagues, and it is not rhetoric. Indeed, since decades of operation of MAIRE. We have issued the heat stress procedure and programs, which all have improved the condition of our workers, and today, I would like to speak with you about six main pillars which we implement in our construction site. Start with the training. As been said, we do a lot of trainings. We inform the people about extreme weather conditions, how the hazards can affect them, and how they can mitigate the effect on themselves.
We move next to the shelters. Shelters are temporary structures which we build nearby the working location where the people can go to rest, drink some water, cool down for the temperature, and eventually come back to the working site. We inform about the cycle of rest and work, and we also inform about the quantity of water that people must drink. Next is the monitoring system. We have an instrument which measures the heat stress index, which we communicate through a flag system. We have the green, the yellow, and the red flag, being the red flag the most dangerous condition on the site.
And through these flags, we inform the people how to manage their stress. Next is the emergency preparedness. We issue an emergency response plan, and we perform a lot of emergency response drills. We have doctors, site doctors, nurses, and ambulances, and with these resources, we perform our tests in our emergency drill to make sure that we are efficient should an event occur. Next is the medical check.
Medical check is another important moment in which our site doctor receives the fitness certification from all the hospitals for all the people. And then, accordingly, we classify the risk of the workers, making sure that we follow up with them according to their medical situations. And next is the camp leisure. Perhaps one of the most important because we take care about the people 360 degrees. We don't only check their condition, the physical condition, the mental condition in the construction site, but also we follow up in their camps. We perform audit inspection.
We have a welfare committee meeting made by the top manager where we assess the performance. We make sure that they have good food, health food. We ensure that they have a comfortable rest during the night and health situation, health welfare facilities. And indeed, we also perform sport events. We perform workshops and musical events to make sure that people are resting not only physically, but also mentally, and now I would like to close by saying that this year, we have zero recordable injury in heat stress, and this means that we are performing good. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Carmelo. Thank you very much, Carmelo. So, Valentina, Mark, could you explain us something about our corporate social responsibility initiatives worldwide?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Good afternoon. We have seen social sustainability has a lot of meanings. One of them means also to take care to support local communities, fostering as much as we can their prosperity during time. We did it basically through education and knowledge sharing as leverage for social and economic inclusion. And we did it since a decade in India with a very consolidated approach where the private sector, academia, civil society, and other social actors work together to face environmental and social challenges with very concrete actions, as our CEO said.
But let me give you an example that goes exactly in that way. We are in India, Bihar state, a small town along the Ganga River where waste management is a real challenge because waste is dumped in the riverways and is becoming not only an environmental but also a health and sanitary issue. How to approach such a complex scenario? Starting from the local actors, we started collaborating with the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, to design a tailor-made initiative that addressed the local needs.
After a detailed assessment, we found some initiatives that could fit with the local needs, and we promoted, 1st of all, awareness about the problem in the local communities. But let's listen to Neelam, a university researcher that worked with us on this project. Under the project of circular economy, solid waste management in Barauni, we applied two basic methods to engage with the stakeholders and create community awareness.
One was where we conducted initial in the initial stages of the project, we conducted transit walks, we conducted FGDs, focus group discussions, and we also hired a local NGO called Aakash Ganga Rang Chaupal Association. We also had very good focus group discussions with the beneficiaries like sanitation workers, women of the households, and we also conducted a household survey. Through these exercises, we could connect to the local beneficiaries. We could also understand their challenges that they are facing in solid waste management.
The 2nd exercise that we did was that we conducted student awareness programs, painting competitions with the support from the local NGO Aakash Ganga Rang Chaupal Association. They conducted about 500 different competitions, 500 different student competitions through which students were made aware of the segregation practices in solid waste management.
The 3rd thing that we did was that we also applied a mobile app that we created called Kachra App, where the local volunteers were asked to test the app in terms of how much waste is being generated, how much waste is being collected, which helped them also to understand the service chain of the solid waste management, and it helped them to relate to the circularity of the solid waste management.
So what worked in Bihar? 1st of all, the engagement of the communities. So community engaged and empowered, plus capacity building for the local institutions that led to awareness on the problem, but also accountability on the solution. Then the technology with the app that helped to monitor the project, but also to keep alive the interest of it. And then the attention to social, cultural, and religious aspects because we were asking for a change and tradition needs to be addressed as well. But Bihar project is not the only one. We are going to execute a new project in Odisha on the east coast of India.
Again, with the contribution of another university, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, thanks to the cooperation with the local institution, we will execute a small biogas plant that will produce compressed gas from waste to be donated to the community kitchen for the needy people so again, concrete actions, multistakeholder approach, and really a wide view on the problems. Leveraging the expertise and experience of Indian models, we will thrive actually to extend our impacts and change that we can impact worldwide through CSR.
Multistakeholder approach is the key when we talk about CSR and we talk about local communities. Speaking of which, an important stakeholder to be involved during the design of the new ideas and put them into reality are our employees, as Stamicarbon did during last years. Isn't it, Mark?
Yes. Thank you, Valentina. My name is Mark Sleijser . I'm head of the marketing department at Stamicarbon, and I'm going to tell you a bit about Ideas to Reality. Ideas to Reality is an employee challenge for Stamicarbon employees where employees can submit an idea and also vote on each idea. We have multiple projects, and during the live sessions, employees are presented those topics, those projects. With this, they have a very high commitment from employees, but also very high engagement because it's colleagues presenting ideas to colleagues.
The benefits of this is, of course, part of multiple stakeholders. Of course, employees benefit. This is a crucial thing or an important thing in the engagement of Stamicarbon colleagues. Local communities benefit. To give you some examples of this, in 2022, the winning project was a planting 5,000 mangrove trees in India that protected the back-lying agricultural land, so it really resonates with Stamicarbon's purpose to enable the world to feed itself and to improve the quality of life.
In 2023, we sponsored an educational project in Nigeria where we helped transition students from a primary school to 2ndary school and enabling them because education in Nigeria is not as we expected from in the Western countries. This year, the winning project is a collaboration with an industry organization called Engineers Without Borders, which resonated with us a lot, and what they do is that they share their knowledge, share their experience, voluntary engineers to projects. By doing so, enabling projects to move forward. The project that we particularly sponsored this year is on site.
This is a picture from Nigeria as well, where the local youth community collects plastic, collects garbage from the local area, so it has an immediate environmental impact, but from this plastic, they put this in a shredder and they create building blocks, and they sell those building blocks, so it also becomes an economical benefit. Of course, this is done in an almost makeshift shed, so what we do with our HSE manager, we upgraded their shredder so they can work more safely, they can be more productive, and have an even bigger impact.
This is just one example of the Engineers Without Borders. They have lots more projects, so this is also why we contacted them also together with the group, and I'm happy to announce that we are in conversation with them to see how we can engage with them more so we can broaden our impact. Thank you.
So thank you, Valentina. Thank you, Mark. And now I will ask and I will invite Irene and Annalisa to present us the clients, cultural relations, and security on our group.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Now I will ask you some questions about security. So are you ready? No, it's a joke. Of course, to raise the attention because we had the last one. But what is paramount about security is that it's never, ever a single service. Security is analyzing information, constant analyzing information, and networking. So my group is moving a step forward, is fostering a new era about security and duty of care, not only for our employees, but also for our clients.
And this is why I'm sharing the stage with Annalisa and the international relations, because whenever we want to reach a goal in our activities, of course, we move abroad. We move in other countries. And on the other hand, our clients come to visit us in our country and in our HQ. So what is important? As you can see, we need tangible security, but we have to take care also of the psychological part of that.
So we need to understand about traditional, cultural, social, geopolitical, and sometimes situational events important to understand how to create a safe and secure environment where to live and work in both conditions, abroad and in our country. So how we can do that? Collecting and analyzing information. And of course, we need a network of people helping us on this issue. For instance, whenever a delegation comes to visit us, our strength as a group is the cooperation between different departments.
1st of all, of course, international relations and also security management group. But we need the help also of local police forces and, of course, other authorities, national authorities responsible for security in our land, of course. So this is our approach. This is our attitude because our 1st and most important defense will be always us. Now I want to leave the stage to Annalisa that will explain better what is our policy about this visit and the delegation.
We are talking about clients, and we are talking about cultural relations. We selected three pictures that are three important moments that highlight how important it is for MAIRE and is in its DNA from the beginning to create a strong relationship with clients and to build a joint team in order to face complexities.
Sometimes we are seeing a very big project, a lot of difficulties, a lot of problems, and just because we build a strong relationship with our client, we are facing these kinds of issues in a better way, so this is why in MAIRE we created a space in which clients can feel at home, really, and you can see we are celebrating together local holidays like Diwali in India. We are celebrating National Day like a special anniversary with them.
But also we respect the protocol and the tradition when we go abroad and when we host them in our offices. This is super important. And we are reaching a level that is a high level. But in this moment, we would always think about the step ahead, what we can do better, what we can do together. So we were thinking of involving more and more in our sustainability strategy, the client, and giving them specific tasks to reach together because just together we can be more and more sustainable.
So MAIRE has to do together with clients this kind of path. It's a journey. We always say it's teamwork. Sustainability is teamwork. Thank you.
Thank you so much. We would like to thank all of you. Thanks, and now we would like to invite Simona Dolce, our Group Corporate Affairs, Governance, Ethics, and Compliance Vice President.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm very pleased to speak today about governance. That is my passion for more than 25 years, but before diving into governance, I show a picture that I took in Mumbai when I went last July. This is the G20 motto: One Earth, One Family, One Future. The G20 leaders endorsed in September 2023 the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance. These are the leading principles of corporate governance, and the G20 leaders told us about the necessity of a global cooperation for tackling the ESG challenge.
Each one of us is involved in this challenge, and when I took this picture, I thought that at MAIRE we embody this motto. We have a lot of corporate mottos, I know. But I know that I thought that One Earth, we are a multinational group and we are present in more than 50 countries. One Family, we are a multicultural group. We count more than 80 nationalities and diversity, as Sara and Francesca said, is our strength, is our opportunity. One Future. You have seen in the other panel, MAIRE Group is an enabler of the energy transition.
We are committed in taking care of our future. But now let's go inside governance. Why governance is so important in the ESG agenda? Because governance supports and strengthens the other E and S dimensions. Governance empowers sustainability. And in MAIRE we believe in having a good corporate governance besides a business proper conduct. And we want to share our principles and our values with our whole supply chain.
That's why we are implementing a supplier code of conduct. What is, for us, good corporate governance? Good corporate governance means, 1st, to have a long-term vision. 2nd, we have rules and processes well defined and strictly checked. 3rd, we need strong coordination among all our activities and all our companies, and we are convinced that governance is enhancing our sustainability path.
MAIRE Board of Directors has approved a long-term strategic plan, a 10-year strategic plan that integrates all the sustainability strategies, and we cannot have a good corporate governance without having a proper business conduct based on transparency, ethics, and accountability. Transparency means that our decisions are open and clear. Also, our data, financial and non-financial, must be understandable by our stakeholders. Ethics means that we have values and principles, and these values and principles guide us, guide our behavior, our decision-making process.
We have also to be accountable. Accountable means that our decisions are taken with a sense of responsibility, also in compliance with laws and regulations. If we had a good corporate governance, a proper business conduct based on transparency, ethics, and accountability, we can foster a positive corporate culture. We can enhance the trust of our stakeholders, and we can also maintain our strong reputation. Having all that, we want to build again, you have seen in the S panel, and the E panel, our relationship with our suppliers.
That's why the Supplier Code of Conduct, it's a name to implement the relationship with the supplier in order to build a sustainable supply chain, in order to spread our ESG challenge. So going to the conclusion, in MAIRE we are working very hard for being best in class in governance, transparency, and also in reporting because we want you to keep on choosing my group, MAIRE as a partner of choice for building One Earth, One Family, and One Future.
Thank you. Now please join me in welcoming to the stage Davide Ragosa, Irene Aliverta, and Giancarlo Reschigna Venturini. Thank you. Davide is our Group Corporate Affairs and Governance Head of Department. And Davide will share with us our CSRD approach. Please, Davide.
Thank you. Thank you, Simona. Good evening, everyone. Talking about the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, better known as CSRD, is challenging because it's a new and very complex regulation. But today, instead of diving into technicalities, I want to share with you our experience. But 1st, let's have a look to the past. Over 10 years ago, Italy introduced the gender quotas to ensure proper gender representation on boards. At that time, many questioned about the purpose of such new regulation.
But today, it's natural to have female colleagues part of our boards participating in the decision-making and strategy decision-making process of our group. The same question is arising today talking about the CSRD. Many are asking, what is CSRD for? But CSRD forces us to make the right question. Are we fully aware about the importance of sustainability today?
To ask this question, I want to share with you our approach in the CSRD alignment process and the main three key benefits that today we identified thanks to the CSRD. Talking to our approach, the CSRD alignment process represents for MAIRE a transformative opportunity for a new point of view in awareness of sustainability. To approach the CSRD, we assessed our organization and system and procedures. We have updated our analysis on impact and risks, and that consented to us to identify new opportunities for the whole group.
We set new rules and responsibility. The most important thing is that we had the chance to identify new competencies inside our organization. Talking about the three main key benefits, today we identified the following three main key benefits: increased awareness about the importance of sustainability in connection with our strategic goals for the future, even more strong commitment to diversity, and a new representation of our long-standing values.
Talking about the increased awareness about sustainability, as Fabio said before, in the recent past, we have the chance to secure new financial instruments linked to ESG thanks to our sustainable approach. Regarding our commitment to diversity, we have the chance to strengthen even more our commitment, and today, we have a proper gender representation in all the boards of our controlling company, always keeping in mind a meritocratic approach in any case.
For us, the new reporting on sustainability that will be published in the beginning of 2025 is an opportunity to represent our long-standing values to our stakeholders in a new way. For us, this will consent to our stakeholders to really appreciate from a new point of view our active and concrete commitment to sustainability.
Going to the conclusion, every change, especially when requested by law, can be met with reluctance. But if we embrace it, our perspective changes. For MAIRE CSRD, it represents a new way of seeing things, strengthening our commitment to sustainable long-term values for our stakeholders. Thank you.
Thank you, Davide. Now I ask to Irene Aliverta, our Sustainability Disclosure Reporting and Performance Senior Manager, to bring us in our 1st climate report and all the big effort we did for realizing it. Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Simona. It's a pleasure to be here today as a representative of a wide working team of more than 70 professionals across our organization, from our risk and insurance management, environmental sustainability, all the contract management teams, and more than 30 teams from our operational projects. Last September, MAIRE published its 1st TCFD report.
TCFD is recognized, continues to be recognized at the international level as the main framework that allows companies to communicate effectively how they manage risk and opportunities related with climate, and the main purpose of this recommendation is to give markets confidence that climate considerations are properly included, embedded in the business strategy and the decision-making processes of the organization, so why TCFD for MAIRE?
For a very simple reason, because this report, this voluntary report, marks an important step in our commitment for transparency towards our stakeholders. Because the report allowed the company to be included in the industry best practitioners in terms of climate change beyond any compliance. How we perform this analysis? We examined two main types of risk, starting from the physical climate-related risks. We assessed how extreme weather events, so for example, floods, hailstorms, heat waves, could have an impact on our business, on our operational activities economically.
We analyzed these events in the short and long term, focusing on how well our proprietary assets and operational projects can respond, can adapt to these climate events. Concerning transition risk, we analyzed the changes that will come with the transition to a low-carbon economy. For example, we consider new regulations, technologies' evolution, market dynamics, and also societal evolutions.
While these changes can bring challenges to companies, including MAIRE, on the other side, they also offer significant opportunities, business opportunities, for example, especially in terms of sustainable industrial solutions. So, arriving at the final results of our analysis, one 1st point, business strength. Our analysis confirmed that MAIRE is resilient to climate risk. In the short term, we have a number of mitigation measures, concrete mitigation measures, contractual approach, and insurance coverage that minimize the risk that these climate physical events bring to our company.
This underscores the robustness of our business approach and also the capacity to weather immediate challenges related with climate. Looking ahead, we are conscious that the exposure to extreme climate events could increase in the next coming years, but our adaptive strategy will enable our company to respond to this increase of climate-related events.
Furthermore, the energy transition presents substantial growth business opportunities for our company. In conclusion, our TCFD analysis shows that we are well equipped to tackle climate challenges and seize new business opportunities. You can find all the complete report methodologies and results on our website, and all the future updates will be included in the next sustainability report under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive that Giancarlo will speak about in a while. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Irene, and thank you also for these great results on climate report. And here is Giancarlo Reschigna Venturini. Giancarlo is our Group Sustainability Reporting Performance and Disclosure Head of Department. And Giancarlo will bring us inside our CSRD impact on MAIRE's reporting. Thank you, Giancarlo.
Thank you, Simona. Good afternoon, everybody. For this last session, we'll talk about how the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is transforming our approach to reporting, creating also value for value creation. Let's start from the 1st aspect. CSRD marks a fundamental shift in corporate reporting. We are moving away from standalone sustainability reporting towards a fully integrated approach where financial and non-financial information are fully integrated. But this is not just about combining documentation.
This is about understanding how sustainability drives financial performance and vice versa. For our EPC and STS business units, this means that every business decision must take into account not only financial return but also the sustainability impacts of our operation. Furthermore, it is also an opportunity to highlight the positive impact of our decarbonization technology, for example. Let's move now to the 2nd aspect I want to discuss today, the focus of strategy.
The directive demands more than just reporting. It requires a clear strategic vision, and for MAIRE this is an opportunity to highlight how our sustainability is embedded in our day-to-day operation and how sustainability strategy in our company is fully integrated in our industrial plan. In general, we need to focus on setting targets, for example, setting a precise timeline, allocated resources, and finally establishing accountability for people. Okay, we can move to the next aspect. Perhaps the most important change of CSRD is the shift from retrospective reporting to forward-looking.
This means that we needed to project our sustainability trajectory. We needed to identify future challenges and opportunities. We needed to identify alternative scenarios. We needed to build a science-based target. In this way, we can allow our stakeholders and our shareholders to understand not only where we are, but most importantly, where we are heading to.
Let's move to another important aspect. It's called double materiality. CSRD requires us to assess our impact on people and planet in terms of positive and negative impacts and mitigation. On the other side, the regulation requires us to understand how the sustainability aspect impacts our financial performance, both in terms of financial risks but also in terms of financial opportunities, and let's go to the last aspect, very important, which is the perimeter. CSRD requires us to extend the perimeter of analysis beyond our direct operation, so we should consider upstream and downstream.
On the upstream side, we should consider, for example, emissions and social impacts of our suppliers, of our supply chain. On the downstream, we should consider the project lifecycle impacts. This new approach means that we need to cooperate with the suppliers on one side, with clients, with business partners. And with this integrated approach, we can identify possible risks, but on the other side, we can enhance business opportunities. In conclusion, at MAIRE we view CSRD just not as a compliance exercise, but as an opportunity to confirm our position as a sector benchmark.
We are committed to implementing best-in-class practices, driving innovation in sustainable engineering, and finally setting the highest standards in transparency and impact reporting. CSRD represents a pivotal moment in corporate reporting. By embracing these changes proactively, we're not just preparing for compliance, but we're positioning ourselves as industry leaders in the energy transition sector. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you. Now I ask Ilaria Catastini to join the stage again. Thank you from the G Panel.
So we met Charlie in London. We were in London because we were having a course in the City of London School, and we met this fantastic student. We were very impressed by her vision, by her perception of the reality, the situation. And so we decided to invite her to represent the view of her generation. Charlie Swan, please. Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you for inviting me.
The floor is yours.
Good afternoon. My name is Charlie Swan, and I'm here today to represent the youth, to share some of the common opinions amongst my generation about sustainability, and to provide a fresh perspective on the energy transition. I 1st met representatives from the MAIRE company when they held a hydrogen science workshop in partnership with my school. After the event, the company reached out to me asking if I would speak at this conference, and I was delighted to accept this opportunity. The global environmental landscape is excruciatingly difficult at the moment.
Sometimes I feel as if we're all doomed, that people like me are merely screaming into a void. I constantly wonder if my small sustainable actions are actually making a difference, if I'm doing enough, if I should be doing more, if it will ever be enough. I wonder if we can pull humanity away from the precipice it feels like we're teetering on, and yet, as a young person who bases a lot of their decisions around sustainability and always thinks about the environmental ramifications of my actions, it can feel quite isolating. A lot of the time, I feel quite frustrated by my peers.
Yet I know that many of them must be feeling the same, experiencing the same anxiety as me. A 2022 survey conducted by the charity Save the Children showed definitively that climate anxiety is rising in children in the U.K. where I'm from. 70% of participants were worried about the world they will inherit. 60% thought that climate change was affecting their generation's mental health, but then, why does it feel as if we're not doing enough? I put it down to four main reasons.
1stly, we're worried that adopting a more sustainable lifestyle will change our quality of life. We're scared that if we embrace a more zero-waste sustainable lifestyle, we will have to give up the luxuries we've become accustomed to. 2ndly, I think there is a deep-rooted shame born from our relative privilege. We don't want to be more eco-friendly in our choices because to do that, we would have to recognize what we were doing before was harmful and polluted our atmosphere. 3rdly, the worst impacts are most significantly felt in poorer countries.
I've noticed that in high-income countries, we do not grasp the gravity of the environmental situation. Perhaps we may be experiencing hotter summers or seeing the flowers bloom at erratic times, and we're lulled into a false sense of security. We think that that is all there is. We say that the world has time when there are already climate refugees, when people's homes on low-lying islands are being destroyed right now. Finally, and most importantly, the disconnect people of my generation are feeling. The thing is, when I'm talking to someone, I often see the attitude displayed that they are just one person.
Even if they radically change their lifestyle, the impact on the environment would be negligible. What they don't seem to see is that if everyone adopted that attitude, saw themselves as just an unimportant one in eight billion, we would have eight billion people not making a difference. I feel as if these reasons also apply to the people in power, the politicians, presidents, and prime ministers who make the decisions on their nation's switch to renewable energy. They walk a fine line between not alienating their supporters and the necessity of energy transition.
In countries like the U.K., there is a shame around the methods with which we became a global power. It was partly for exploiting our non-renewable resources. Now, even with the discourse around climate change, we cannot really call out other countries wanting to do the same. We are hypocritical if we say that they cannot develop by burning and selling their reserves of fossil fuels because that's exactly what we did. Most obviously of all, the lack of urgency around global decisions. People in power feel as if they have all the time in the world.
Deadlines for things such as net zero seem to be being pushed further back or scrapped entirely. Meanwhile, my generation is screaming. We want to know if there will ever be a net zero, if fossil fuels will ever be discontinued. We want to know if we will ever live in a world without deforestation, without sea levels rising, without the polar ice caps melting. We want to live without this climate anxiety. I don't want you to think that I see the energy transition in black and white. I know that it is nuanced. It's far more complex than I've been able to describe.
Furthermore, when I was writing this speech, I wanted to present an accurate representation of my generation's feelings about climate change. I haven't mentioned loss of hope because that's how many of us feel hopeless. This company represents a little bit of hope in our fragile, overheating world. I'm so grateful that things like this event and this company exist in the world, and so I'm standing here sharing my thoughts with you. Thank you.
Thank you. So Charlie is 14 years old. Now I would like to invite our chairman, Fabrizio Di Amato, for the conclusion remarks. Thank you very much for everything.
Thank you, Ilaria. Thank you very much for this incredible journey. Did you arrange a very, very, very interesting journey also for me because I managed this company for 40 years? But every time when I'm a part of this journey, for me, I receive very, very additional feedback to encourage me to push more and more. I would like to say thank you, Charlie, for the incredible speech you did, but also for the reasons about your generation's worry about.
I believe, all that, and then we need to do the best things, but I would like to say personally, my personal, but in name also in all our organization, we do the sustainability, not our best effort and blah, blah, or greenwashing. No. In our organization, every day we are working to solve and try the solution and pushing. You see the presentation in the beginning.
The question is not Scope 1, Scope 2, because this is in our hands. Maybe we can achieve the result early. Maybe we can do, we can manage. But there is just 2% of the impact of the climate change. That is the thing where we are. But otherwise, I don't want to be as a responsibility in the hands of a client and so on. This is our responsibility. We are the management team. We are the management team of the organization. And then we have a responsibility in front of you and your generation to solve and try what is the way to solve the solution in very, very short time.
Repeat, what I can guarantee to you and all the young people, we are working on that every day. We are in touch with Ilaria, with all the team in our organization to do and implement our things, but the 2nd point I would like to also answer what I'm saying is after your presentation, thank you to all because it was impressive. I have in mind to do additional things. I would like to speak and talk later on with Fabio, but especially with Alessandro Bernini.
Unfortunately, I think in China it arrived in China now, but to talk to integrate in our commercial proposition, our commercial proposition, the strong part of sustainability in terms of governance, everything, climate, sustainability in terms of economics, sustainability. I would like to integrate in our commercial proposition as a part, as a key pillar of the distinctive company in competition with the other company.
Because some of my colleagues as entrepreneurs or managers say to me, "Fabrizio, you spend a lot of money on the sustainability, but when you can cover, what is the secret to cover this cost? What is the idea on that?" And then my answer is always the same. In my opinion, the sustainability is the future, is the opportunity. If someone can drive, can check what is the best things and the best way to do, I think it has to be more and more distinctive. That's what our clients appreciate, and they want to have a solution also because also by them, they need to find a solution like the presentation they did.
I just back a few days ago. Six or seven years ago, I remember very well, Charlie, when I went to the client, especially with most of the important clients, it was as an oil and gas company. When we start about to talk green energy transition and so on, after 20 minutes, the discussion, they said, "Okay, Mr. Di Amato, I understand everything what you are saying. I appreciate your presentation. Everything is done. But now move back to the oil and gas industry because we need to develop a project to do something." But now the situation is completely changed.
Our client asked many times, "Please, do you have some solution? You incorporate a new entity as a scheme, as a technical technology solution, Sustainable Technology Solutions. What we can use for us, what you can provide us as a technology, as a solution, as a new idea of a plant." That's why also we have been awarded one of the most important projects for our organization is in UAE, in Abu Dhabi, as oil and gas. Maria and all the team are talking about that. Oil and gas was the secret of oil and gas, in my opinion, was the three.
One is the reputation of our organization. That's important. Reputation, you can build the reputation, you need to work 10, 12. In my personal experience, as 14 years working in these industries, but you can destroy everything in one day. That's the reputation is one thing. The 2nd thing was connected also to our performance because we did in Abu Dhabi more than EUR 25 billion projects in this country in the last 20 years, more or less EUR 1 billion average per year of new projects. The 3rd one is the technology approach.
That was the distinctive. And then the client, after they feed the engineering phase, decided to award the project to us directly negotiation without bid. That is the success. That's why I believe and convince and push every day all our people to work as the best in class in governance and compliance, the best in class of diversity because I think I believe in this movement. We as increase also I see in the presentation here today from India, we are moving around 24%-25% as female, as women employees in our organization. I remember very well 10 years ago was.
Okay.
[Foreign language] I think what I'm saying also, the agenda we are working on that, we are doing as economics, as financial disciplines because repeat, the sustainability is only climate has to be connected as to do in the end of the year, you need to be as a profit company. If you have a profit company, you can invest additional money to develop additional things. That's why we are moving also here and Mr. Pejman Djavdan, we are discussing a few weeks ago about the transformation also in approach of green ammonia. We decided to take a challenge.
We have Charlie, we are in the comfort zone because Stamicarbon doing urea from fossil since 1947, correct? 1947. But now we decide to move as a green ammonia. It's a challenge for us, but thanks to the experience we created in the past 40, 50 years, we can move, and then the courage where the challenge for us was to develop and pushing during the meeting, all the management team, please, guys, move on because this is the future. If you want to see our organization move on in the future, you need to change every day. You need to rethink what you are doing.
Giacomo, we are doing a Waste-to-Chemical, Waste-to-X, waste to. I remember very well in 2018 when we started to discuss on the screen about the ideas of the waste, what we can do all the waste, not only for mechanical recycle and upcycling, what we did also in a part of the region here as a recycle. What we can do with the CSR as a different asset, what we can do. Then in that time, I remember we started from scratch. Nothing was there. From scratch, but every day, every week, we believe on that. We believe on that. We believe on that. Pushing sometimes some problems, mistake.
Then again, the day after, we do it again and believe and pushing. Now the organization moving on alone thanks to the ability of Rispoli and all the team that's here. There are many people who don't want it to be just one person because the organization is working well if everyone is a part of the team organization. Like what Simona said, the family, as we are considering MAIRE is an important family. That's why we are incorporating in our DNA. The sustainability is in our DNA.
That's why we are moving and we believe in the near future to deliver our strategic plan already presented in March this year. There is an incredible jump from the fossil basis to energy transition as a part of low carbon decarbonization because sometimes the only things I would like to say to you, and then maybe you can have an ambassador of the youth generation, especially in your school, maybe you can say someone, "For sure, if you ask me what do you want the world, I would like to have green immediately tomorrow morning."
For sure. No doubt on that. But other way around, we need to work as a real story. That's why we need to work together. The young generation as an inspiration for us, give us every day. Also for me, as many times when after the meeting or something, also with my younger son, sometimes say, "Me, Papi, what we can do on that? Why you not resolve this issue? Why is this that?" What I can say, sometimes in the beginning, I try to explain, "I'm sorry, but we can do what we can." I'm changing now the view. I said, "Okay, you're right. We need to do more and more."
And that's why our organization is doing a lot of job on that. And that's why we are working and we can increase, Ilaria, what we are saying in the next Capital Markets has already said to Fabio Fritelli, now the CEO on this scheme. I already said to him, "I would like to present some new solution we are in place as a real story, not talk, real fact." Also today, we are discussing this morning two meetings. I spent, I think, five hours today just to update me about the technology we are developing now and developing and what we can do in the very short time and the mid-time and the long time.
Repeat, I don't want to add additional thing. Just I would like to say thank you very much to all of you. Thank you, Ilaria, for a very, very incredible day. The presentation was for me impressive. That is I would like to push also my heart to help you and to pushing our organization to be disciplined, repeat, as a financial discipline because without this, we cannot do anything.
1st, 2nd, to our approach of sustainability, 360 degrees sustainability, governance, many things what they discussed, all the people before me, has to be believe on that. The 3rd one has to be approaching with the new generation as input in and out. If we can work on that with them, we can deliver the best things we need and the world we need. Thank you very much to all.