This year, we were present at a new edition of the C40 Global Summit of Mayors, which was held this time in the City of Buenos Aires and brought together more than 100 mayors, international delegates, local mayors, philanthropists, young people, and important stakeholders.
The meeting, which takes place every three years, served to raise issues related to climate change and the need to move forward with concrete actions to address it. There we present our proposals for electric mobility and together with Enel Trading, the clean energy options for companies.
Along these lines, Enel's director for Latin America, Maurizio Bezzeccheri, participated in one of the panels with other leaders in the sector, in which they analyzed how cities and companies can work together to retrain workers and generate jobs. green.
Speaking of green employment, Bezzeccheri considered that today "it is not an option today" and stated that "either we go in that direction or we do not go in any other".
On the other hand, when talking about smart cities, he explained that at the beginning those that added technology were called that. Today that concept is evolving into a circular city since technology is a facilitator that is there but we must "also take care of economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability and social inclusion".
He also raised the need to redefine the regulations of the cities that are based today on a system of old rules. In the case of electricity, he explained that there was talk of generation, transmission, and distribution. But now we have prosumers, that is, people consume but also produce electricity.
“Consumption is going to change. That is why we have to move from a linear approach to a circular approach, looking at the complete life cycle of goods and making our goods and products last longer. We are going in the direction of electrifying consumption”, he concluded.
In addition to this, Bezzeccheri led the event "Transition towards circular cities in Latin America and the Caribbean", which emphasized the challenge of decarbonization and electrification in the region. The organization was in charge of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the C40, the City of Buenos Aires, and Enel.
The meeting featured important speakers such as Jose Luis Samaniego, director of Sustainable Development and Human Settlements at ECLAC; Carolina Piedrafita, Senior Specialist in Urban Development and Housing at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and Rodrigo Perpétuo, Executive Director for South America for ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability.
They were joined by Vanessa Esslinger, an expert in Circular Economy for the UN environment program; Marco Bucci, Mayor of the City of Genoa; Clara Muzzio, Minister of Public Space and Urban Hygiene of the City of Buenos Aires; Antonio Muñoz Martinez, Mayor of Seville and Jheydi Quiroz, Deputy Mayor of Lima.
Claudio Cunha in the C40
For his part, our country manager, Claudio Cunha, participated in the last day of the C40 Mayors' Summit, which brought together representatives from more than a hundred cities.
There, he was part of the panel that looked at how cities can encourage private investment in electric buses.
In this sense, Cunha opined: “Electric and urban mobility have a fundamental role, you cannot become net zero without this route. And that progress must be supported by a renewable matrix. It is useless if the electricity is generated in a polluting way”.
In addition, he pointed out that Enel X "works with different players on projects that are advancing, improving and from which we learn." Finally, he advocated a joint effort by the public authorities, the private sector and society to seek comprehensive and sustainable solutions.