Enel CEO Francesco Starace has joined the United Nations Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance, following a call from UN Secretary-General António Guterres to 30 influential corporate leaders with the aim to cooperate over the next two years in the area of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) financing. Enel is the only global utility and the only Italian company in the Alliance.

By leveraging on the expertise and influence of its members, GISD is set to devise ways to unlock long-term investment in development and speed up progress towards achieving SDGs. Enel’s CEO is among the corporate leaders working to unlock these investments thanks to his commitment to renewables, which has led Enel Green Power, the Group’s green energy company, to become the world’s largest private renewable player, just 11 years after its inception.

“We are working to further strengthen cooperation with other global businesses and unlock funding to achieve SDGs, as sustainability is a major driver for long-term value creation. In Enel, we have fully integrated sustainability into our business model and operations, boosting the company’s profitability. Looking ahead, the GISD Alliance will provide the perfect forum to accelerate the private sector’s commitment towards sustainable business models and enable sustainable finance to kick-start a social, economic and environmental improvement across the globe,” Starace said.

In line with a strategy that combines value creation and the accomplishment of SDGs, Enel has recently issued the world’s first General Purpose SDG linked Bond Programme in the United States and the Group’s first SDG linked Bond in Europe, which leverage on a new approach to capital markets that couples the company’s sustainability performance with securities. Furthermore, the United Nations Global Compact, which is the main corporate sustainability initiative to drive forward SDG achievement, reconfirmed Enel as a LEAD company for the ninth consecutive year.