The Government imposes climate neutrality for 5 years in the road tender although Europe leaves the deadline until 2050

The Government is committed to positioning Spain as the spearhead of the energy transition, even if that means being greener than Brussels itself.. Since this summer, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda has redoubled the environmental requirements of public tenders for the operation and maintenance of roads and already requires that candidate companies seal the commitment to achieve carbon neutrality in the five years after the award, a milestone that the Twenty-seven established for 2050.

This is clear from the new environmental clauses that the portfolio led by Raquel Sánchez, through the General Directorate of Highways, has introduced in its latest tenders for the conservation, exploitation and works on the roads.

Builders and concessionaires were on notice. Transportation, which has not answered the questions of this medium at the time of going to press, has been working for months on the redesign and improvement of the national road infrastructure from various angles, always with sustainability as a backdrop. Among the department's priorities has been to have reliable indicators related to energy consumption and polluting emissions generated by road transport, above all, within the framework of the international commitments acquired at the state level and the Sustainable Mobility Law, still in parliamentary process.

The most recent example of the green action led by Transport has been the approval, in the Council of Ministers last week, of a public tender for the execution of various road conservation and operation operations in the province of Segovia, for a estimated amount of more than 29 million euros.

In the bidding documents for the Segovian roads, Transport has incorporated “compensation” objectives for polluting emissions. In detail, the candidate companies must take into account in their offers the calculation of the carbon footprint that they will generate during the execution of the contract in each section of the road network.. Last July, the ministry included the same requirement in the tender for services for several Sevillian roads, worth almost 21 million.

But, in both tenders, the condition that has drawn the most attention in the sector is the obligation that Transport has established that the successful bidders commit in advance to present, in the 6 months following the resolution of the tenders, “a plan of decarbonization” designed to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions and compensate for all those emissions that could not be reduced”, and that concludes with a commitment by the winning company to achieve “Net Zero, or carbon neutral balance , five years after the activity that is the subject of the contract”.

Emissions from trees

The concessionaire companies – among which at the national level giants such as Abertis, Acciona, Ferrovial, Itínere or Globalvía stand out – will be able to offset their emissions footprint through CO2 absorption projects, for example, with reforestation initiatives.

Another of the mitigation formulas contemplated in the Ministry of Transport's specifications are the compensation projects that these companies can launch or the acquisition of carbon credits in the voluntary market, platforms in which companies can collaborate as financiers of projects aimed at capturing CO2. The latest provisional data from the specialized auditor Ecosystem Marketplace indicate that, in 2022, the global voluntary carbon market mobilized an investment of 1.3 billion dollars.

The giants of the concession sector, where each has set its own Net Zero calendar, prefer to remain silent about the climate acceleration of Transport and its impact on the sustainability plans and costs of an industry that is still trying to surf the wave of inflation. Unofficially, the general conclusion is that it is not advisable to cloud the relationship with the Administration with opinions.