Carlos Rodríguez-Villa, Managing Director of AlgaEnergy, gave a TED talk in which he showed how, through innovation, the goals set in the 2030 Agenda can be achieved.

AlgaEnergy, world leader in microalgae biotechnology and its applications, was invited to participate in an event to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the approval of the Sustainable Development Goals. Organized by the UN Global Compact Spain, it took place at the headquarters of the Fundación Canal, in Madrid, on September 22 and was attended by personalities from different fields such as the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, in charge of opening the event and Carolina Marín, the multi-awarded badminton world champion.

In the event innovation was highlighted as the best tool to achieve the goals set in the 2030 Agenda, specifically in the business field, and how it offers opportunities to emerging markets that are leading social and environmental transformations.

AlgaEnergy actively participated in the event. Our Managing Director, Carlos Rodríguez-Villa, was in charge of giving one of the three TED talks that took place during the day. Rodríguez-Villa began by highlighting the importance of microalgae on our planet and because "we owe them our lives, since they give us more than 50% of the oxygen we breathe". During his presentation, he brought to the audience´s attention the full potential of microalgae to respond to some of the great challenges facing our society, focusing on food security (SDG 2: Zero Hunger). In this sense, Rodríguez-Villa showed how, through our solutions, we are helping to improve the performance of agricultural production and, therefore, to ensure the supply of food to a population that is growing at a rate never seen before. Some solutions contribute at the same time to the regeneration of the soil, to improve the nutritional quality of food and to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers - all this without harming the competitiveness of farmers, on the contrary, increasing their profitability.

In line with the theme of the day, Carlos Rodríguez-Villa highlighted our commitment to innovation, since "we have accumulated more than 50 years of R&I, with a presence throughout the value chain". This would not have been possible without the collaboration of benchmark partners such as Yokogawa -shareholder since 2018-, Caixa Capital Risc and the Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI), dependent on the Ministry of Science and Innovation -both shareholders since 2021-; AENA and the European Commission. The support of all of them has allowed us to carry out an ambitious internationalization plan with which we have reached 20 countries where we serve more than 3 million satisfied farmers.

You can watch Carlos Rodríguez-Villa's TED talk (in Spanish) here.

AlgaEnergy, committed to the UN Global Compact

AlgaEnergy signed the United Nations Global Compact in April last year, hence joining more than 12,500 signatory entities of this initiative around the world, which seeks to strengthen private sector alliances to achieve the SDGs.

The United Nations Global Compact is the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative, supported by the United Nations (UN) and encompassing the UN's principles and values. In this way, the biotechnology company undertook to incorporate 10 universal principles related to human rights, labor, the environment and the fight against corruption in its strategy and operations, as well as to act in a way that advances society and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).