OHL participates in the 2012 XI National Environmental Conference

OHL has participated in the XI National Environmental Conference (Conama 2012), which was held along with the IX Latin American Meeting on Sustainable Development (Eima 2012), between 26-30 November, arranged by the Conama Foundation.

This new sustainability event, held every two years, included approximately one hundred activities, distributed into nine different areas: Energy and Climatic Change; Economics; Urban Challenges: Mobility and Construction; Land and Rural Development; Biodiversity; Water; Environmental Quality; Technology & Innovation; and Society.

At the National Environmental Conference, held for the first time in 1992, the OHL Group participated with various talks: Manuel Villén, Innovation & Sustainability manager, took part in the current debate entitled Innovation and technology as an instrument for sustainability, and in the round table Instruments to support Ecoinnovation, with a speech entitled The Cubipod: an example of success in innovating and sustainable public purchasing to protect shelter harbors in ports. These activities were supplemented with the participation of Rosa Alberdi, head of OHL’s CSR Service, in the work group entitled Business results = financial results + activity print.

Furthermore, the OHL Group presented various technical communications in poster form, along with the arrangement of a dynamic meeting entitled Sustainable development as a spring for internationalization and growth, which counted with the participation of Manuel Villén, Sergio Paredes, Senior Specialist in Environmental Processes for Codelco (Corporación del Cobre de Chile) projects, Tomás Rodríguez, head of Quality, Environment and Prevention in OHL Construction (Latin America), Álvaro Gamarra, Head of Service of OHL Industrial Power, Ricardo Muñoz, technician at OHL Industrial Power, Christian Gasparín, technician at Ecolaire España (OHL Industrial), and Javier Muñoz (GIT – Grupo de Investigaciones Termoeneréticas – UPM), whose speech was entitled Thermosolar energy in the future.

This dynamic meeting included a video projection of the Puerto Errado 2 thermosolar plant in Calasparra, Murcia. OHL Industrial’s division, through its Ecolaire subsidiary, was awarded this contract in 2010. It is the first thermosolar plant in the world under commercial exploitation to be constructed with Linear Fresnel-type mirror technology; the plant uses directly generated steam technology, which has the advantage of not requiring an oil circuit, used in conventional plants, integrating the solar field to act as a steam generator in the water-steam cycle.

Moreover, OHL Industrial’s division also announced a technical communication on the largest biomass plant project for Spain, located in San Juan del Puerto (Huelva), whilst OHL Construction’s division presented another one focusing on Embalse de Chacrillas, with a project directed at the Rocín River basin in the commune of Putaendo (Santiago en Chile).