One of the highlights of the Company’s sustainability policy is its springhead preservation program involving more than 1.5 thousand households in the protection of 1.8 thousand springs from the North to the South of Brazil. “For us, water is a resource to be nurtured, it is an asset and therefore a raw material for harnessing hydroelectric power”, Sattamini says.

Among the benefits arising from this initiative are the improvement in the quality of the water consumed in communities from Bahia, Ceará, Goiás, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina to Tocantins with the consequent reduction in the level of sickness among children and adolescents. The Springhead Protection Program was one of the schemes receiving accolades in the 2017 ANA National Waters Agency awards.

ENGIE is also an active player in hydrographic basin committees, producing and distributing saplings in forestry nurseries and raising fish fry of native species for replenishing fish stocks in rivers. In November, the Conservation of endemic species of ichthyofauna in the Iguaçu River project, conducted in partnership with Universidade do Oeste do Paraná (Unioeste), was awarded by the American Chamber of Commerce, Rio de Janeiro (AmCham Rio).

Another environmental initiative recognized by Amcham Rio was the Mercury toxicity biomarkers used in the hydroelectricity sector in Amazonia project, developed by the Energia Sustentável Brasil (Jirau HPP) consortium in which ENGIE has 40% stake. The team responsible created an environmental detection tool for monitoring the impact of small opencast mining activities on water quality in the area of influence of the reservoirs.

Since 2005, ENGIE Brasil Energia has been a component of the Corporate Sustainability Stock Index, a tool used by B3 for an annual comparative analysis of the performance of companies with stock exchange listings from the corporate sustainability aspect. In January, the Company was included in the business publication, Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking as one of the one hundred most sustainable global companies in the world, being placed 52nd among nearly 6 thousand publicly listed companies.