We provide waste, water and energy services for our clients. So we are well placed to help protect and preserve the environment for future generations, as set out in our Impact 2023 strategy.

At the heart of this are two commitments:

• Enabling more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be avoided for our customers by generating more clean energy and recycling more.
• Reducing carbon emissions – both within our own operations and at the sites we help our customers manage.

Reducing GHG emissions is central to achieving net zero both within our operations and for our customers, and we have always been proactive in implementing changes and improvements for our business and for our customers.

But we want to go further. This is why, in 2019, Veolia Group committed to a science based target to reduce our GHG emissions from our operations (scopes 1 and 2) which are consistent with reductions required to keep global warming below 2°C. By 2034, we aim to reduce our absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 22% from a 2018 base year.

Our Impact 2023 vision also sets targets to continue to avoid GHG emissions from our waste, water and energy activities.

We are continually looking to improve our carbon footprint reporting. So, from 2021, we will produce an independent carbon report to increase our transparency and accountability.

Emissions related to waste is perceived as downstream Scope 3 for our customers. So we’re helping them to remove GHGs from across the value chain by turning waste into more valuable resources.

We’ve expanded our wood recycling and processing capacity by 50,000 tonnes per year.

The new Runcorn Wood Recycling Facility treats wood waste from Merseyside, enabling around 80% of it to have a second life as flooring, furniture or worktops. Veolia’s renewable biomass energy operations, which supply both industry and district heating schemes, have saved more than 500,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions over the past four years in the UK.

Peat is important to our planet because it acts as a carbon and water store and provides a home for wildlife.  But 280,000 tonnes of peatland is being destroyed every year.

We are doing something about it. Using some of the 400,000 tonnes of composted biodegradable material collected from homes and businesses, we use a network of ten composting sites to produce 150,000 bags of peat-free compost known as Pro-Grow, every year, cutting carbon in the process

We now have 40 electric vans and 40 electric road sweepers mobilised to support our local authority customers. We continue to explore electric refuse collection vehicle options to bolster our low-carbon fleet in the coming years.

Brent became the first local authority in the UK to start operating an entire fleet of gritters with electric salt spreaders.

We operate ten energy recovery facilities (ERF) across the UK, generating 1.2TWh of electricity by treating non-recyclable waste. These facilities provide enough electricity for more than 431,000 homes. In 2020, 2.3 million tonnes of residual waste was processed through the ERFs.

Veolia’s ERFs in Leeds, Sheffield and South East London play an essential role in district heating networks. At the centre of local loops of energy, they generate enough heat and electricity for almost 50,000 homes and commercial buildings. This provides low-carbon heating that saves 83,300 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent a year.

According to the UK Government, UK hospitals now have a total installed capacity of combined heat and power (CHP) systems of 170MWe. This means we manage 44.2% of the UK’s hospital CHP capacity, or 75MWe.

We provide electricity and heat – and in some cases, cooling – to 114 hospitals, with CHP systems in 80 of them. This means we serve 44,500 hospital beds, intensive care units (ICUs) and theatres, supporting more than 8.1 million patients a year.* Our services deliver CO₂ equivalent savings for healthcare of around 119,000 tonnes per year, equivalent to taking 85,000 cars off the road.

We also support universities and colleges with low-carbon electricity, heat, hot water and cooling. We have 30 MWe of CHP installed at more than 60 CAMPUSES, serving over 244,000 students. These services save 50,131 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent a year.

For industry, we manage 1,100MWth of heat to support factories – the equivalent of the heat used by around 600,000 homes. We also use CHP technology to supply electricity to production lines – enough to supply 200,000 homes and save 158,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.

We also install solar panels at our facilities and those of our customers. So far, we have installed 6,226 kW of solar panels in the UK to a number of NHS Trusts, an East Midlands Council, and Veolia’s premises.

*At an average stay of two days per patient, according to NHS figures.

In 2020, we decided to transition towards an improved approach for the assessment, protection and promotion of biodiversity on an international level. As part of our Group’s commitment to the Act4Nature international initiative, we will now:

• Use the diagnostic biodiversity footprint tool to assess all sensitive sites and produce action plans with at least 75% deployment
• Use zero phytosanitary products at 75% of sites. These are used to control plant diseases and include pesticides, herbicides and rodenticides
• Implement ecological management at sites (more than one hectare of green spaces) at 75% of sites
• Promote awareness internally or externally of issues concerning the protection of natural environments and biodiversity at 50% of sites.

Veolia operates and maintains 17 municipal wastewater facilities that have the capacity to treat almost 1 billion litres of wastewater every day, cleaning sewerage and discharging clean water back into the environment. Our municipal wastewater contracts serve 1.8 million people.

During 2020, Veolia has invested in several automated quality monitoring and control systems to improve the quality of discharged effluent and reduce energy use at its sites.

The Veolia Environmental Trust supports community and environmental projects across England through the Landfill Communities Fund, using money provided by Veolia. In 2020, we granted £5.6 million to support 112 projects, including community gardens, nature reserves, public footpaths, cycle paths and playgrounds.

Around £600,000 was provided to the Woodland Trust to create the Northern Forest by planting 20 million trees by 2050. Stretching across the country from Southport and Liverpool in the west to Hull in the east, the Northern Forest will boost woodland cover in the region by 7.6%.

We continue to find new uses for our landfill sites once they are restored.

At our former landfill site at Netley, Hampshire, a solar farm built on the land generates up to 5MW of clean electricity every year.

We continue to capture methane at a number of our sites too. In 2020, we exported 393,575MW of energy from landfill gas utilisation: enough to power 94,000 homes.

Veolia’s Recycling Fund for Communities supports grassroots projects that protect the environment and encourage people to do the right thing with their waste. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the 2020 funding was launched digitally via two webinars, which saw 91 members of the public and community groups apply for tickets.

In total, 144 applications were received, 16 projects were supported and £13,000 in donations were made.

Over the past decade, we have received no prosecutions or summonses related to our environmental compliance. Operational Risk Appraisals (OPRA) scores categorise the environmental risk of industrial process installation and waste operations. In 2020, our OPRA compliance score average was 0.69, comfortably below the <1 level, ensuring we remain within Bands A or B.

We worked with YouGov to better understand what people think about climate change. In our joint survey we found that two in five UK adults have a greater concern about carbon than they did five years ago. It also found that the public believes everybody has a responsibility to cut carbon, including:

• The government 27%
• Consumers 17%
• The energy sector 20%
• Businesses 10%

Veolia now provides energy services to around 200 public sector customers, and more than 300 industrial and commercial sites, which is helping them to cut carbon.