Héctor Dominguis,
Chief Executive Officer,
Grupo Dominguis Energy Services (GDES)

Established in Spain in 1932, GDES is an international leader in energy services. With sustainability as its core purpose and primary objective, all of the company’s services and activities are designed to contribute to decarbonization, energy efficiency, digitalization and waste reduction through a circular economy.

GDES CEO Héctor Dominguis is emphatic that “We face one of the toughest challenges that humanity has come across, with global warming as a major threat to our existence. Increasing our efforts towards sustainability is an absolute must."

GDES has been involved in the nuclear industry for over four decades, but its intense collaboration with the Spanish Nuclear Society in defending the key role of nuclear energy towards decarbonization and mitigation of global warming, raised the company’s awareness of the urgent need to take action to prevent further global warming.

According to Héctor, “This made us realize that our purpose as a family in business should not focus only on future generations of our family, and we refocused our purpose to try to have a larger impact in the sustainability of the planet.”

The company’s first step was to gain the approval of its shareholders and board to adopt a new purpose with a broader scope and transmit this to all the business leaders within the organization to direct their objectives, investments and strategies in the same direction.

Specific business units were created to promote each of the company’s core objectives of efficiency, digitalization and a circular economy, and the business plans and investments were adapted to develop these businesses.

Héctor adds that GDES is focused on the long term, as is the case in most family businesses. “In addition to developing three- and five-year business plans, we also plan for the generations that will follow,” he says, “and we work diligently to leave them a better company. This is what has led us to make sustainability the centerpiece of our purpose. We want to leave a more sustainable business and a better planet for future generations by helping to improve the environment, the economy and society as a whole.”

GDES was already aware of and involved in sustainability efforts but making sustainability the sole purpose of the business was a significant transition point. Sustainability goals are now fully integrated with the company’s business strategy, since the strategy is to develop services that contribute to the sustainability of the company’s clients. In this way, GDES is helping to improve sustainability performance well beyond its own operations.

This central purpose is embedded in GDES’s business, which is designed to add value only by marketing sustainable services to its clients and in making the company’s central purpose more important than the purpose of growth. “Of course,” Héctor adds, “we hope that If we do things the right way, more clients will want to work with us, and we will be able to help even more industries to comply with and exceed their own sustainability objectives.”

The company is now in the process of launching an Open Innovation Portal to attract ideas from other entrepreneurs, companies, scientists and investigators that share our purpose and help them achieve their own goals by supporting them financially, strategically or commercially in any way we can.

For its own business, GDES has adopted standard KPI measurements, along with specific indicators for each client to measure the success of the company’s services in terms of energy consumption and waste reduction.

Technology and innovation are on the company’s side with major developments in science and technology that can help to improve the planet. Digitalization and data analysis, for example, are the main sources of improved efficiency and waste reduction in production processes and are key enablers of the GDES sustainability journey. The enabling impact of technology also helps to explain why GDES has invested in an advanced data analysis company that specializes in process optimization, which will help to improve the company’s own processes as well as those of its clients.

Héctor Dominguis concludes that “Urgent actions are needed in order for our children to enjoy a healthy planet, but our individual efforts will have a limited impact on true sustainability. That is why we have to stretch beyond ourselves and increase the collective impact we can have on others through our businesses.

With sustainability embedded in our own business strategy as well as our service offering, the growth of our business will be a direct sign that we have helped to improve our own sustainability performance and that of our clients as well.”