Limiting our impacts
Combating climate change
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Veolia Energy-Dalkia is continuing its efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of heat produced by facilities larger than 20 MW.
For a constant scope (base 2005), the carbon content per MWh produced dropped by 1.8% in 2006 despite adverse climatic conditions, and by 3.4% in 2007 due to improvement in efficiency,management of the energy mix, better use of co-generation and development of renewable and alternative energy.
Note : based on a 2006 proforma, the carbon content per MWh produced would have dropped by 5.3%. Without the proforma
and if the new contract in Hungary is included (wood heating), the 2007 performance is even better with an increase of 6.4%,namely 0.32 metric tons of CO2 per MWh thermal.
In 2006, Veolia Energy-Dalkia created an indicator quantifying the overall reduction of GHG emissions and converting primary energy savings achieved into metric tons of CO2.
Efforts made to reduce GHG emissions, particularly due to energy management systems and renewable energy ,
have been represented as a "carbon efficiency" ratio that measures the percentage of the overall reduction of emissions,
as a percentage of Veolia Energy-Dalkia's total GHG emissions. In 2006, the small increase in comparison with 2005 is explained by the acquisition of new coal facilities. A value of 21.7% was achieved in 2007 due to the reduction in the percentage of coal, the 42% increase in the percentage of wood and the 12% reduction in the percentage of fuel oil in the energy mix. Veolia Energy-Dalkia has set itself a "carbon efficiency"ratio target of 23% by the year 2011.
In 2002, Veolia Environmental Services made a commitment to equip its landfill sites (in operation, accepting biodegradable waste, and for which Veolia Environmental Services controls investments) with landfill gas capture and treatment systems, with a target of 100% by the end of 2006.
82% of landfill sites were equipped in 2007, which is equivalent to 92% of all buried waste. 20 sites still remain to be equipped, and an investment plan has been produced for them. In particular, this plan includes five Clean Development Mechanism projects in progress.
The challenge has now moved to two complementary fields :
- Methodologies for calculating the production of methane and for measuring captured and emitted methane :
Veolia Environmental Services uses different methodologies for calculating the production of methane from landfill sites depending on its regulatory obligations, but none of them offers a precise measurement. There are also uncertainties with the measurement of captured methane. Due to the importance of this issue, innovative work was initiated on modeling methane production, better reliability in the measurement of captured methane, and the development of a precise methodology for measuring diffuse emissions of methane. - The efficiency of capture devices : The Group made the decision to provide information about the effective capture ratio of theoretical methane emissions starting from 2007 (despite necessary reserves for the calculation and measurement methods used), so as to evaluate our progress in this field.
The Group has committed itself to improving its capture ratio, which was 50.2% in 2007, between now and 2011.
Without Proactiva(1) , the capture ratio is 58.4% on the scope of Veolia Environmental Services alone.
Veolia Environmental Services and Proactiva have initiated action plans designed to:
- install capture and treatment systems on sites that are not equipped (particularly through CDM projects);
- deploy methods of efficiently operating landfill gas capture systems.
In 2008, the Group will deliver a target value of its capture rate for the 2011 deadline, although this target may be revised if significant changes to the scope are made or if any measurement methodologies are changed.
(1) Proactiva est une filiale à 50 % avec le groupe espagnol FCC, intervenant en Amérique latine.
Environmental health
Management of dioxin emissions related to waste treated in incinerators is a public health challenge.
Because there is no scientifically accepted value, Veolia Environmental Services has adopted the strictest regulatory reference, which is the value adopted by the European Union, to measure its performance.
In 2007, Veolia Environmental Services decided to extend the indicator to include all managed facilities, even when it does not control investments for these sites (this represents a total of 78 incinerators compared with 23 in the past) and to fix a permanent target of more than 95% for this new scope.
Sanitary quality of drinking water
The ratio of compliance with the regulations is used universally to take account of the sanitary quality of water.
However, this indicator has some limits that Veolia Water would like to improve. Veolia Water has created a new indicator based on chemical and bacteriological parameters that the World Health Organization has considered to be priorities (E-coli, arsenic, fluorides, nitrates and selenium), in order to evaluate the quality of the water that it distributes. The method of calculating this indicator includes the intensity by which thresholds recommended by the WHO are exceeded, and the duration.
Therefore, it reflects the capability of the operator to initiate appropriate corrective actions as quickly as possible, to enable permanent control of the sanitary quality of distributed water. In 2007, the indicator was calculated for 78.8% of the total population served by Veolia Water throughout the world. The objective is to adapt tools and organizations so as to quickly reach a 100% coverage ratio.
99.3% of the entire population served by Veolia Water for which this indicator was calculated benefited from excellent quality or high quality water. For the remaining 0.7%, solutions will have to be found with our clients so as to achieve internal standards of Veolia Water concerning the quality of distributed water.
Managing the legionella risk in our facilities
The risk prevention system developed by Veolia Energy-Dalkia is based on :
- the existence of a prevention plan adapted to each country and conforming with the Group's system;
- increased awareness of personnel to the risk of Legionella;
- an audit of each of its sites at-risk and implementation of our consultancy obligation towards our clients;
- implementation of technical devices complying with the prevention plan.
The progress rate in 2007 was 89.7%, which was almost 5% better than 2006.
The constant improvement to the indicator reflects Veolia Energy - Dalkia's efforts to maintain high quality monitoring and good prevention at its facilities.
Limiting air pollution
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Emissions from incineration plants per metric ton of treated waste are continuously being reduced due to improvements in the performance of treatment systems. This is the case particularly for nitrogen oxides,for which treatment has significantly improved in Asia.
Veolia Transport is continuing its efforts to reduce polluting emissions from its fleet of passenger transportation vehicles. Compared with the target fixed in 2005 (80% of the vehicle fleet), reduction objectives for 2008 are 8% for carbon monoxide (CO), 14% for hydrocarbons (HC) and 15% for particles.
2007 results have improved by 1%, 6% and 5% for CO, HC and particles respectively,which is on track to achieve the objectives for the end of 2008.
Note : 2005 and 2006 values have been updated to include a correction to the 2005 target.
Limiting the discharge of pollutants into water
Veolia Water has developed a composite indicator that better reflects the performance of treatment systems used, taking account of and weighting different forms of pollution, following the approach used by water agencies in France.
The chemical oxygen demand (COD), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P)
and suspended solids (SS) are thus included alongside the biological oxygen demand (BOD),to represent a global efficiency ratio.
The global treatment efficiency ratio this year is 79.7%.
The treatment efficiency (BOD) remains stable at 90%.