Universal Registration Document 2022

Focus: Group action in response to the energy crisis

The global post-Covid recovery and the geopolitical tensions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine have led to sharp increases in the price of oil, gas, and electricity. At the same time, the availability of EDF’s nuclear fleet was affected for a period of several months by the discovery of signs of stress corrosion on some reactors. In addition, the 2022 drought resulted in historically low levels of water availability at EDF dams.

In this environment, the Company has remained active to ensure the supply of electricity to its customers throughout the winter of 2022. To ensure maximum availability of its production fleet, the Group has leveraged all resources available to it, starting with the maintenance of all its nuclear, hydro, thermal, wind and solar power facilities being anticipated and scheduled before and after winter wherever possible.

Furthermore:

• fuel savings have been achieved for 4  nuclear reactors; the maintenance schedule was altered for 15 scheduled reactor shutdowns so as to keep them in production over the winter;
• water reserves for hydro dams have been managed with extreme caution;
• stocks of thermal fuel (coal, fuel oil, and gas) have been carefully managed;
• the stock of replacement parts for wind and solar farms has been increased.

At the same time, EDF has ramped up its actions in favour of better energy use:

• providing further support to customers to help them control their electricity and/or gas use, in particular through the Tempo option within the Regulated Sales Tariff (Tarif réglementé de vente, TRV) ⁽¹⁾ promoted at the request of national government to eligible consumers, as well as by leveraging industrial and other customers’ capacity for load balancing and launching awareness- raising and communications campaigns as of autumn 2022;
• by rolling out an internal “energy sobriety” plan on 29 August 2022, EDF aims to reduce the Company’s main energy use by 10% through pro-active measures and employee engagement. This plan further amplifies and supplements the commitments made by the Company over the past few years. To address the crisis, it is putting forward new measures and encouraging the everyday implementation of “energy-saving tips” with three main levers: workspaces, digital practices, and ongoing travel optimisation initiatives. For details of this plan, see section  3.2.4.3.3 “Optimisation of internal consumption”.

Focus: nuclear issues

Several of the Group’s most practical challenges relate to nuclear power, both for the optimisation of its positive impacts and for the mitigation of its negative impacts. Several key components of this are outlined below, with further details in the main body of the statement of non-financial performance.

16 Group CSR commitments

For each of the 16 high-priority CSR issues, the Group drew up a corresponding CSR commitment in the form of operational policies and actions designed, from an environmental, social and societal point of view, to minimise the negative impacts and maximise the positive impacts of each of these issues.

The following mapping lists these 16 CSR commitments and states for each of them the corresponding sustainability risk as described in the Group major risk mapping,

its contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and related performance measurements ⁽²⁾.

The Group’s non-financial performance is a component of the Group’s performance, designed to facilitate a just, inclusive energy transition.

For a just and inclusive energy transition

EDF’s raison d’être is based on four key areas which, taken together, aim at ensuring that the Group’s engagement in the energy transition is fair and inclusive. In 2021, after validation of the principles of its “Just Transition” plan by the CSR Strategy Committee (an Executive Committee committee) and by the Corporate Responsibility Committee (a Board of Directors committee), EDF published them in

the form of a report ahead of the COP26 summit. In 2022, the report was updated on the occasion of the COP2027 summit. For a detailed description, see the publication “Just Transition commitments, from strategy to action” on the Link to webpage: www.edf.fr website ⁽³⁾.