ACCIONA has been the winner in the Spanish section of the European Business Awards for the Environment in the “Developing Country Cooperation” category for EncASa Oaxaca. Juan Ignacio Entrecanales, vice chairman of ACCIONA, has accepted the prize in the ceremony presided by The Spain’s King Felipe VI on October 28th 2020.

acciona.org carries out this programme of access to affordable, reliable & sustainable energy, water and sanitation basic services to rural households in Oaxaca (Mexico). It is implemented in a public-private partnership for development –PPPD– with the Government of the State of Oaxaca through SINFRA –its Infrastructure and Sustainable Territory Development Secretariat–, AECID –the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation– and its Mexican counterpart AMEXCID.

EncASa Oaxaca offers the mentioned services through the solutions included in a catalogue of ecotechnologies to be chosen by the users and subsidized by the PPPD in 50% to 80% to make them affordable to their low incomes. The catalogue includes third generation solar home systems, water catchment systems based on improving existing infrastructures, rainwater catchment or well pump, water purification systems –filtration, ultraviolet light or chlorination– and sanitation systems –dry toilet or artificial wetland–, as well as cook stoves with chimney. The users themselves mount the systems with the training and the supervision of acciona.org.

Up to now, EncASa Oaxaca has benefited more than 1,100 families with access to mainly electricity, as well as to drinking water, appropriate sanitation and improved cook stoves in more than 130 rural Oaxaca communities. It brings access to electricity with solar home systems not having heavy metals, not emitting CO2 and allowing the connection and charging of electric devices avoiding the use and uncontrolled disposal of batteries in rural, sensitive areas. It also offers cook systems saving firewood and so avoids deforestation. In addition, it provides water & sanitation systems favouring the reuse of grey water and the saving water in rural Oaxaca, where there is a recurring drought; that is, it is a tool of increasing the resilience and adaptation to climate change.

acciona.org develops this programme following its unique activity model to bring the ACCIONA’s services & infrastructures where there are no market conditions –extremely poor communities–. It is based on the search of the long-term sustainability by developing service delivery models adapted to every context, and the cooperation with other actors having common objectives with which it shares achievements and responsibilities. These aspects are what the “Developing Country Cooperation” category of the European Business Awards for the Environment recognizes.

More info at https://acciona.org/mexico/encasa-oaxaca