Stakeholder engagement

Stakeholder engagement was created with the aim of creating shared and lasting value for the wellbeing of communities and translates into the desire to align the Group's actions with the interests and demands of our stakeholders. 

In January 2002, a Group Policy on Stakeholder Engagement was published, setting out the guidelines by which we engage our stakeholders.
Over the years, we have identified 7 macro-categories of stakeholders that we address throughout our value chain:

Since 2021, we have consolidated a structured process of listening and dialogue with local stakeholders through working groups and regular public meetings designed to respond to the specific needs of the communities in which we operate.

Over the years, we have developed several innovative formats, such as the “Svolte Giuste” – a discussion model that addresses complex choices – and the “Alliances for the Transition”, aimed at fostering cooperation with stakeholders and accelerating the ecological transition through practical solutions.
In 2024, the roadshow “Sustainable Local Areas: A Shared Endeavour”, organised in collaboration with TEHA, was guided by the IMPACT model, structured around three complementary dimensions: Impact - generating positive impacts, Pact - building alliances, and Act - imagining and implementing concrete actions to foster tangible change across local areas.

In 2024, the roadshow focused on sustainable supply chains, with the aim of understanding the main challenges associated with integrating sustainability into business models and identifying concrete support measures together with local business. It also dealt with safeguarding local biodiversity, with the aim to identify collective actions to increase local awareness of biodiversity protection, bridge information gaps and adopt concrete measures to protect local ecosystems.

Stakeholder engagement is for us at A2A a key strategic lever for strengthening relationships, achieving the objectives of the Industrial Plan, and generating shared value.

In 2024, Sardinia, western Sicily and Liguria were included in the roadshow for the first time, following the recent expansion of the customer base and services, which required a specific positioning exercise. In these locations, the Multistakeholder Forums were held in collaboration with Lifegate, using the Life Talks format: meetings for the local people and the Group's stakeholders to spread a culture of sustainability and promote coherent, responsible communication in the communities where the company operates, with the presentation of territorial sustainability reports and in-depth discussions with researchers, scientists and key opinion leaders. 

The central and common theme of the three events was the protection of biodiversity. 

As part of this project, and in response to the need for information programs and awareness-raising campaigns on biodiversity, we decided to collaborate on the production of three special episodes of Lifegate's daily podcast 'News from Planet Earth', which covers the most important news on the environment, energy, biodiversity, human rights and sustainable mobility.
 
The three special episodes featured science communicators who took part in our Life Talks and the Group's Director of Strategy and Growth. 

• Episode 1: «Biodiversity and sustainable lifestyles» - Valeria Barbi, naturalist and political scientist
• Episode 2: «Fake climate news and how to debunk it» - Ruggero Rollini, science speaker 
• Episode 3: «What will the cities of the future be like?»  - Lorenzo Giussani, A2A Strategy and Growth Director and Tessa Gelisio, presenter and environment speaker

In 2021 we implemented the joint use of an in-house digital platform that maps and monitors the progress of relations and initiatives undertaken with the various stakeholders to optimize stakeholder engagement and collect specific requests from areas where we operate with our services and activities.

Over the years, the mapping process has been made more comprehensive and complete by bringing the number of institutions involved to around 40 in 2024. 
This mapping and evaluation allows us to achieve two objectives:

• measure relationships with communities affected by the Group's activities through numerical KPIs, using a corporate and BU perspective; 
• monitor relations to adapt the Group's engagement activities and strategies to the different territorial contexts. 

The process also requires the companies involved to indicate the number of initiatives per type for each stakeholder sub-category and to provide details of the most relevant initiatives. 

The results of the entire process are shared and accessible through an interactive in-house report. By extracting comparable indicators across categories, territories and business units, the model enables stakeholder relations to be monitored over time and appropriate engagement plans to be defined.

The Sustainability Focal Points group, our network of employees entrusted with integrating sustainability values and objectives into all company processes, was formed in 2021.

Focal Points plays a key role in spreading the culture of sustainability and integrating ESG issues into all corporate processes, gathering the needs and expectations of the various stakeholders and acting as an intermediary between the Sustainability Development structure and the various Business Units and Corporate Functions. 

We organize meetings and initiatives on a regular basis to network and create awareness in the Focal Points group.

Activities in 2024:

• Fresk workshop on the theme of biodiversity, an interactive format that gave participants the opportunity to reflect on the existing interconnections between ecosystems and how these can be impacted by human activities.
• Cycle of two virtual meetings, in collaboration with the World Energy Council Italian Committee, on the themes of COP29, with the aim of raising awareness, increasing critical spirit towards these topical issues and to seize opportunities for business.

Thanks to a structured process of listening to the territories, we establish an ongoing and in-depth dialog with communities and the contexts where we operate. Building lasting relationships with all key stakeholders allows us to adopt an approach that is geared towards generating a positive impact, based on the co-design and development of initiatives with shared value. 

The regular monitoring of sustainability issues that are important for our stakeholders, which is carried out by company contacts through the stakeholder management platform, is a key element in ensuring that our actions are aligned not only with the Group's sustainability strategy, but also with the expectations of our stakeholders.