The EDF group R&D Division is implementing the Group’s strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 by actively monitoring negative emissions technologies and more specifically exploring the following solutions:
The EDF group has solid skills in this area, having participated in several international research projects and created a capture demonstrator at its Le Havre site. This €22 million demonstrator (25% co-funded by ADEME, i.e. the French Environmental & Energy Management Agency) has captured 1,900 tonnes of CO2 and was used to determine the technical and economic feasibility of several processes. An alternative to storage is to reuse carbon dioxide captured in a different chemical form (fuels, materials). Applied to bioenergy (considered to be CO2-neutral), CCS is becoming a way to generate negative CO2 emissions (BECCS) and could play a major role by 2050. The EDF group’s R&D Division has undertaken action to adapt these capture technologies to industrial processes in other sectors.
Atmospheric CO2 capture technologies (Direct Air Capture, DAC) are still at the experimental stage. In November 2020, EDF in the United Kingdom published a call for expressions of interest to set up a direct air CO2 capture demonstrator on the site of the Sizewell C nuclear power plant project.
These practices, like afforestation, reforestation, or proper management of pastures and wetlands now appear among the most promising potential ways to increase carbon sequestration in soil and forests, and accordingly generate negative emissions. The EDF group is the third biggest land manager in France, with more than 40,000 hectares of land featuring not only production sites but extensive countryside (including 7,000 hectares of forests).
The EDF group’s R&D Division is working to assess the potential of the Group’s land to store carbon, the temporal, additional reality of offsetting actions, and the synergies and potential contradictions of carbon offsetting with respect to other ecosystem services, including preservation and biodiversity.
The climate change we are witnessing is unprecedented on such a short timescale. The average temperature of the planet has already increased by 1.1°C since 1750 (1). This global warming triggers the rise of sea levels and an increase (to varying degrees in different regions of the world) in the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters; it also contributes to an erosion of biodiversity worldwide. Climate risk is already a tangible reality, the effects of which will become more pronounced in the coming years.
EDF’s facilities have a technical lifespan potentially exceeding 40 years, making EDF one of the major firms, among non-nationalised companies, that is most exposed to the physical effects of climate change. This is why the EDF group identified climate risk as a priority in 2018.
Adapting to climate change refers to a procedure to adjust to the current climate, its changes, and its consequences. This means mitigating the harmful effects of climate change to nurture the resilience of the system in question and making the most of any beneficial effects and resulting opportunities.
The Paris Climate Agreement assigns the same level of importance to the goal of adapting to climate change as to mitigation. However, it must be acknowledged that given the lack of simple, shared indicators, the regulatory framework for adapting to climate change is still considerably less developed than that for mitigation. The National Adaptation Plan for Climate Change (2) makes France one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of planning for adaptation to climate change. France aims to effectively adapt to a regional climate in Metropolitan France and overseas territories by the middle of the 21st century consistent with a temperature increase of 1.5-2°C worldwide compared to 19th century temperatures. However, this plan does not establish any regulatory requirements that are directly applicable to businesses.
The EDF group has therefore taken a responsible, proactive approach by establishing a set of integrated commitments in the Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy.
Pursuant to this policy, the EDF group undertakes to:
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In particular, this policy states that entities most exposed to the physical consequences of climate change should draw up a climate change adaptation plan and update it every five years.
It is important to note that adaptation and mitigation actions are both vital and complementary: unquestionably, the EDF group’s foremost climate change adaptation action consists in striving to produce electricity and heat without emitting greenhouse gases.
(1) Climate change 2021: scientific components. Contribution of Working Group I to the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, August 2021.
(2) National Adaptation Plan for Climate Change (Plan national d’adaptation au changement climatique) for 2018-2022, known as PNACC-2.
