Acciona chairman and chief executive Jose Manuel Entrecanales Domecq has secured the Net-zero champion of the year award for his ongoing innovations in transforming the Spanish industrial and infrastructure conglomerate into a ground-breaking net-zero leader.

Entrecanales has been chief executive at Madrid-listed Acciona since 2004, when he took over from his father. Since then, Acciona has built strong businesses in areas including renewable energy through Acciona Energia and wind turbine manufacture through Nordex.

"Under the leadership of Jose Manuel Entrecanales, in the past year Acciona has increased its renewable energy capacity by 1.7GW – its biggest ever [annual] increase," a spokesperson for Acciona told Environmental Finance.

In the year ended June 2024, Acciona increased its renewable energy capacity by 14% to 13.9GW through Acciona Energia and installed 3GW worth of wind turbines for customers.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson added its "sustainable infrastructure" business sees it "continue to innovate in projects across the world, making sure its work leaves a positive environmental and social impact".

Acciona has diverse infrastructure and construction activities which range from a motorcycle sharing scheme in the Spanish city of Barcelona to constructing metro lines in the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo to constructing water desalination plants in Chile and Australia.

In particular, the Sustainable Company Award judges were impressed by the practical and transparent way in which Acciona has sought to deliver and demonstrate broader positive impact from its activities.

For example, Acciona launched a highly innovative 'sustainable impact finance framework' in June 2023 for its significant sustainable finance transactions. Under this structure, Acciona intends to provide "double impact" through not only its dedicated green use-of-proceeds or ambitious sustainability-linked targets but also through specific 'local impact indicators' (LIIs) identified in its framework.

At an Australian renewable energy project Acciona is developing it is supporting local farms around the project to set their own decarbonisation plans, for example. In addition, it is looking to bolster local 'green' supply chains alongside its projects – for example, by committing to buying from small green steel and concrete companies to help catalyse the development of these local markets.

Speaking to Environmental Finance on the launch of the framework (see Box), Acciona sustainability director José Luis Blasco had explained that the introduction of LIIs into its sustainable finance instruments was in response to the frustrations of Entrecanales and other senior management at the firm about the low impact of large parts of the sustainable finance market at a time when many net-zero activities – including renewable energy development – are largely business-as-usual activities.

Acciona describes itself as "Business as Unusual" as it looks to find new ways to support the shift to a net-zero, sustainable economy.

Blasco told Environmental Finance that the Spanish firm was using the EU Taxonomy for sustainable activities – a ground-breaking detailed list of 'green' activities – to show how Acciona is a company "new sector" in this net-zero-focused world.

"We are a company with EU Taxonomy-aligned Capex of 90% plus," Blasco said. "We think that we are a company in a new sector, trying [to decarbonise the economy] with all these opportunities on the sustainable market."

At the helm for two decades, Entrecanales has played a key role in providing the essential direction for Acciona to develop this innovative and diverse net-zero enabled and enabling company.