Universal Registration Document 2020

3.2.2.2 Soil and underground management

Pollution of soil and groundwater is one of the potential environmental impacts of the Group’s industrial activities. The Group owns, or uses under concession, large land assets. The environmental policies of the Group entities aim to optimise the use of land and protect these environments against any impacts. Land use and groundwater use is monitored as part of biodiversity actions (see section 3.2.1“Biodiversity”) and groundwater monitoring (see section 3.2.3.1 "Sustainability of water use").

Preventing impacts

The prevention of impacts is based on an “in-depth defence” approach and protection methods in place at all industrial sites:

• maintaining the integrity of means of protection to provide a barrier between chemical substances and the environment;
• control of effluents management operations;
• maintaining and inspecting ultimate structures such as retention systems; ensuring that the soil surface remains free from radiological and chemical contamination at industrial sites;
• physicochemical and radiological monitoring of the quality of groundwater at the sites by means of a dense network of piezometers to check the geochemical state of the water tables and retention basins at chemical effluent storage sites;
• reinforcing safeguards measures when transporting fuel or waste;
• ensuring the availability of emergency kits in the event of spillages and carrying out the corresponding drills;
• developing operational procedures;
• and high levels of awareness among operators and service providers through suitable training.

These preventive measures are based on facilities hazard and impact studies and are enriched at the time of periodic reviews.

Optimising soil use

The action plans in place to manage situations across all of the Group’s sites consist of four stages: site surveys; identification of potential pollution; soil analysis; monitoring of sources of pollution and drawing up a management plan and considering possible remediation depending on future use and regulatory requirements.

Specific action plans are under way to limit the use of phytosanitary products:

• EDF’s Real Estate Department aimed to abandon all phytosanitary products by 2022 for all areas of continental industrial sites that are not sensitive to safety and security issues. Other entities no longer use these products⁽¹⁾ ;
• the distribution network manager, Enedis, has the goal of achieving “zero phytosanitary products” by 2021 to maintain green spaces adjoining service sites and from 2024 for industrial sites (source substations).

The action plans are varied and based on alternatives to the use of chemical herbicides (mechanical, thermal or other); vegetation management protocols for EDFRenewables and EDF R&D (differentiated management of vegetation, sheep, etc.); rules relating to companies in charge of maintaining the green spaces. These actions are accompanied by a training and awareness-raising programme.

3.2.3 Integrated and sustainable water management

As a manager and major user of water resources, the EDF group aims to work towards integrated and responsible water management. As such, the Group undertakes to:

• protect and manage water in an integrated and sustainable manner, both quantitatively and qualitatively; consequently, each energy-generating site will provide for, evaluate and report on the sustainability of its water use using an internal EDF group method (pending an internationally recognised method);
• share water within the territories in which it operates by fully taking into account the local water situation (multi-use under climate constraints).

EDF participates in several international work on water (IHA Board of Directors, Board of Directors of the Partenariat Français de l’Eau (French Water Partnership), member of the World Water Council, etc.), and is also directly involved, as UFE representative to Eurelectric, in European Commission working groups on the Water Framework Directive.

3.2.3.1 Sustainability of water use

Water reservoirs held by EDF’s large dams in France enable the storage of over 7 billion cubic metres of water.

At the Group level, around 45 billion cubic metres of water are used for cooling thermal power facilities, of which 99% is reusable and returned virtually instantaneously to the natural environment. As such, EDF is a significant user, but negligible consumer, of water.

Every year, several million euros are spent on R&D in the water sector. In 2019, this led to the launch of the “Visi’Eau” project in 2019, covering different research areas from cold sources to hydrological modelling of a watershed, at a cost of €9 million over 4 years.

3.2.3.1.1 Excellent results in terms of water intensity

Most of the water withdrawal from its facilities is carried out in France (80%) and the UK (18%) in areas where there is no permanent water stress. Many nuclear and thermal facilities are established in coastal locations (and therefore do not use freshwater).

Exposure to water stress

The exposure to water stress of the Group’s production resources was assessed by 4 different international tools (Blue Water Scarcity from WFN, Aqueduct⁽²⁾ from WRI,AWARE from the WULCA project and WEI+ from the EEA). These tools do not identify freshwater withdrawals from stressed areas in France, with the exception of Aqueduct. The (Baseline Water Stress – BWS) is calculated as the ratio between annual water withdrawal and average annual water availability during the 1950-2010 period for 215 sub-basins in France.

The results of this evaluation show that:

• four nuclear power plants are located in an area of extreme water stress (BWS>80%), but are not exposed to water-related risks because they use seawater as a cold source and therefore do not draw fresh water;
• five nuclear power plants face a medium to high risk (20%<BWS<40%), for which specific measures have been taken either at the design stage or during operation (infrastructure, water management with local stakeholders, etc.). They are therefore not faced with water scarcity risks. Therefore, the Lunax reservoir was constructed from the outset upstream of the Golfech nuclear plant to prevent a possible shortage of water from the Garonne used for cooling in periods of serious drought. In 2020, Golfech was shut down for several days during a heatwave, not due to flow issues, but rather high river temperatures (regulatory limits reached);
• three flame-thermal sites are located in a water-stressed zone for which appropriate water-saving measures have been taken with no impact on output, which is low during the summer period (in practice, drought-related prefectoral decrees are issued every year during the summer).