Ence’s commitment to the circular economy is clear. The company works to increasingly improve the environmental impact of its activities by eliminating the concept of waste management. It is a fundamental axis of its strategy that also endorses its commitment to local communities and the planet. For this reason, Ence’s Energy Complex in Huelva will be the next company facility to process the Zero Waste certificate with which AENOR recognizes the efforts of organizations that value their waste to avoid final landfill disposal.
The generation of waste has been and is one of the main environmental challenges of the entire society. Avoiding their abandonment in landfills is essential to contribute significantly to reducing environmental impact, and avoiding damage to ecosystems or accelerating climate change. For this, it is necessary to convert waste into by-products, that is, into useful resources for other production processes, thus saving raw materials and avoiding the disproportionate consumption of natural resources.
This is one of the objectives with which those responsible for environmental management at Ence in Huelva work, in whose facilities they already have very positive data. Last August, the Huelva energy complex managed to achieve an accumulated recovery of 98% of the waste generated in the production process of power generation, mainly ash and sand from biomass boilers, which were used in soil treatment (techno soils) and in the recovery of inorganic matters.
In 2019, with the perspective of a whole year of operation and including waste from all activities carried out in the complex such as mechanical, electrical maintenance, offices, etc., Huelva managed to value 98% of the total. The remaining 2% was delivered to authorized managers for their conditioning and correct final management.
Ence is constantly looking for viable applications for the by-products of biomass power generation in collaboration with other companies for which they are useful. The ashes from the boilers stand out, whose application in soil recovery or the manufacture of fertilizers has outstanding benefits.
Ence thus promotes the development of renewable energy with biomass as a model of the circular economy. The Huelva energy complex already concentrates 137 MWe of installed power with which it is capable of supplying, from Huelva alone, the annual electricity needs of more than 242,000 homes. In addition, it currently has an additional 10 MWe under development with photovoltaic technology.
