All of the Group’s functions, employees, activities and projects are mobilised to fulfil EDF’s objective of being an environmentally responsible company. Some of the actions concerned are presented below.
The EDF group has been committed to action for biodiversity since 2006 with a dedicated policy, and today its biodiversity ambitions are reflected in formal commitments made through two initiatives, Entreprises engagées pour la nature (Committed companies for nature) and “Act4nature international”. These voluntary commitments cover some twenty actions to reduce contributions to major pressure points on biodiversity (as identified by IPBES, the biodiversity equivalent of the IPCC), recreate biodiversity-friendly spaces and conditions, further improve and share knowledge, strengthen biodiversity governance and raise employee awareness.
In addition to these commitments, between 2013 and 2022, the Group undertook more than 66 operations through EDF hydro and its hydropower activities for a cumulative total investment of €107 million (excluding subsidies received), to facilitate fish migration at ecologically sensitive sites in mainland France (“list 2” sites for the purposes of the “national law on water and aquatic environments”), installing fish passes and fish ladders and removing river weirs.
Consistent with its ambitions for the environment and the climate, the Group works to raise awareness among its employees and educate them about environmental and sustainable development issues. In 2022 its “Environment and sustainable development” training offering comprising courses on environmental management, standards and regulations, and environmental analysis, provided 1,755 employees with 19,061 hours of training.
In addition, the rollout at Group level of the “Climate Collage” collaborative workshop, led in person or online by volunteer employees after internal training, gave 66,000 employees greater awareness of the issues of climate disruption.
Based on a concept similar to the “Climate Collage”, the “Biodiversity Collage” raises awareness of the causes of biodiversity erosion. The goal of providing biodiversity training and awareness-raising for 1,000 employees by the end of 2022 has been exceeded.
As the first French Group to sign the EV100 initiative, EDF made a commitment to have a fully-electric light vehicle fleet by 2030. By the end of 2022 the worldwide fleet numbered more than 45,000 light vehicles (especially in Europe) and more than 22.6% were already electric (over 10,300 electric vehicles, an increase of more than 2,500 from 2020). Joining the EV100 initiative is also an encouragement for Group employees to control their energy consumption and reduce their carbon footprint, as it gives them access to competitive offers from car suppliers and offers for recharging services sold by EDF group subsidiaries.
For 2022, the vehicle fleet electrification indicator accounts for 10% of EDF’s and Enedis’ profit-sharing criteria.
To adapt France’s current and future nuclear power plants, in addition to work on safety and security in compliance with regulations and safety authority recommendations, EDF has established a plan to adapt its facilities and their operations. The ADAPT project is part of a systemic approach for analysing the resilience of all ecosystems, natural or socio-economic, which are decisive for generation capacity.
This project sees climate change as systemic and changing. Among other things, these analyses are a basis for:
The increasing pace of climate change is also leading the Group to reinforce its R&D and engineering capacities, by increasing the number of people hired with key skills in all the related areas: climatology, hydrogeology, environmental matters, and of course technical engineering.
