Team size: Seven

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

During crises or periods of instability, plans and priorities of the company must change and adapt to solve the short-term issue. In the same way, the prioritisation of legal issues must be adapted to align with the company’s strategy to deal with those short-term matters.

The legal function in these situations should be highly collaborative, because crises have diverse angles (social, reputational, and financial aspects, besides legal) and must be analysed and attended to using a multidisciplinary approach. In these situations, we have a crisis committee, where all aspects and potential actions and solutions are discussed and approved, to ensure that every decision and action the company implements is properly understood and aligns with the overall strategy.

Notwithstanding the above, the challenge of the legal area (and the company) is to find a balance between managing urgent legal aspects related to crisis or instability situation (short term) without totally putting aside long-term legal strategy.

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

Kallpa operates in the energy sector, and since the beginning, we have viewed sustainability practices as a priority for our operations, considering environmental aspects in the development of our projects and operations. Besides legal and regulatory requirements related to social and environmental matters, Kallpa has adopted voluntary commitments and a permanent evaluation of the impact of our activities.

As legal counsel, it is important to assure the entire organization is aware of our legal and voluntary commitments and the importance of its fulfillment. Se we must communicate in an effective way these commitments and the potential consequences if we do not comply with them. Every person in the organization is important when we talk about the appliance of sustainability practices.

In your opinion, what are the main trends that are salient in your country currently?

Peru has a lot of obstacles in the path to ensuring growth and development for its population. On the political side, we have to overcome political crisis that affects our stability and long-term decisions; develop stronger and national parties; and ensure that politicians are accountable to their voters.

On the economic side, we need to promote private investment. Over the last years, it has been very difficult to develop new mining projects, despite having important pending projects to develop; and in spite of the privileged position we are in to supply the materials the world needs to face the energy transition.

In the energy sector, we are facing a lot of changes due to the energy transition process, technological improvements and cost reductions. Further development will mainly in solar and wind projects. Our main goal is to integrate these new projects with existing hydro and gas generation, to ensure that we maintain the main characteristics of our electrical system (low emissions, security of supply and competitive prices); strengthen environmental sustainability and competitive prices that non-conventional renewables contribute to; and maintain the reliability and security of supply. We have water, solar, wind and natural gas in our country, so we are in a very good position to face an orderly energy transition process.