- The agreement provides for the installation of 46 photovoltaic distributed generation plants by Enel X to serve 1,557 Itaú branches in 14 locations in Brazil, in addition to the purchase of energy on the free market that will serve 564 branches;
- The partnership also includes implementing a system to monitor energy and water consumption at Itaú's facilities and digitize the company's service account management.
Enel Brasil, through Enel X, and Itaú Unibanco signed this week a contract for the development and construction of 46 photovoltaic plants for distributed generation in 14 locations in Brazil. With a total installed capacity of 54.7 MWp, the plants will be responsible for generating clean energy for 1,557 Itaú units. The distributed solar generation contract with Itaú is Enel X's largest in the world. It reinforces the Enel Group's strategy of acting as a sustainable facilitator of the energy transition in the countries where the company operates, fostering the use of green, efficient and secure energy among its customers and business partners. Furthermore, it is another initiative by Itaú towards its commitment to becoming zero carbon by 2050. The agreement with Itaú has a term of 10 years, with the possibility of extension.
Nicola Cotugno, Enel Brasil Country Manager, explains that electrification supported by decarbonization is the path to be followed in the country and the whole world and emphasizes that the electric sector has a fundamental role in this strategy. "The deal with Itaú demonstrates the commitment of two major players towards the goal of zero carbon emissions. Our mission is to help companies of all sizes and segments to achieve their decarbonization goals, in line with the urgency required to curb global warming," states Cotugno. "We offer our customers integrated solutions that ensure smart and sustainable management of energy consumption, enabling cost control, predictability, and reduction of environmental impacts," he concludes.
"This is another important advance in Itaú Unibanco's ESG agenda, mainly related to our Net Zero commitment. Beyond economic issues, the Itaú and Enel partnership promotes a positive impact on the environment, besides reinforcing the importance of using renewable energy in Brazil," comments Luciana Nicola, director of Institutional Relations and Sustainability at Itaú Unibanco.
The distributed generation project reaffirms the sustainable commitment of both companies since it will avoid the annual emission of about 10,000 tons of CO². The distributed generation solar plants will be installed by Enel X in locations in Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, São Paulo, Goiás, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Pernambuco, Ceará, Pará, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo, Mato Grosso, and the Federal District. More than 75,000 solar panels will be installed, and the plants are expected to start operating in about 12 months.
Through Enel Trading, Enel Brasil's energy trader in the free market, Itaú, has also signed power purchase agreements with an 8-year duration and almost 1 TWh of energy traded.
Also, among the deliveries to Itaú, Enel X will implement the UBM (Utility Bill Management) system, which digitalizes the company's payment management, organizing in a single platform all the information about service provider bills, in addition to allowing the monitoring of energy and water consumption at all the company's units and monitoring sustainability indicators. The management of monthly bills is a challenge for companies of the most diverse sizes and segments, and it becomes even more difficult for those with operations distributed throughout the country, as is the case with Itaú. Enel X's UBM will monitor the utility bills of about 3,100 of the bank's units every month, which means more than 6,000 monthly bills.
The UBM platform also enables the monitoring of the results of initiatives developed by Itaú focused on the reduction of energy consumption, such as the modernization of the units' lighting, the installation of distributed generation systems, and the purchase of energy on the free market, which gives an overview of the energy compensated, injected, and the costs avoided. Other benefits of UBM are monitoring sustainability indicators, improving and speeding up the management of goals, consumption, and emissions. In addition to concentrating information on water and energy expenditure, for example, the platform aggregates emissions and resource usage data to calculate and report the carbon footprint.
Enel X will also carry out consultancy and infrastructure works in more than 450 Itaú branches to adapt them to the free market, following all regulatory deadlines, focusing on cost reduction and smart energy management. Furthermore, the Enel Group company will coordinate energy use in the free market for another 564 units.
"The agreement with Enel will enable us to significantly advance the work we have been conducting to expand the use of renewable sources in our facilities. We will take the use of solar energy to a new level in the Brazilian market," says Francisco Vieira, director of Operations and Branch Infrastructure at Itaú Unibanco. "Initiatives like this have two clear purposes: the first is economic efficiency because it gives us greater predictability in energy costs by avoiding tariff fluctuations, but the main objective is to meet Itaú's commitment to sustainability," adds Claudio Arromatte, Director of Assets and Purchasing at Itaú Unibanco.