2021 UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT

Environmental training and awareness, with change

3.1.4 Dialogue with stakeholders

VINCI’s environmental ambition involves a large number of stakeholders, with key initiatives to better identify their needs and bring them the right answers, but also in line with the Group’s aim to make a difference. Externally, VINCI contributes to improving knowledge and spreading best practices in its industries. The Group also rallies its customers, partners and suppliers to play a part in accelerating the development of environmental solutions that meet the challenges of climate change, the circular economy and the preservation of natural environments.

The Group has renewed its long-standing partnerships with the French non-profit Entreprises pour l’Environnement, the Bird Protection League (LPO) and its building and biodiversity urban development programme (U2B), Comité 21, the non-profit Équilibre des Énergies (EdEn), the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB), along with research organisations such as the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), a French think tank formed to facilitate the transition towards sustainable development. VINCI and three of the ParisTech schools (Mines, Ponts and Agro) have entered into a scientific partnership, called VINCI-ParisTech lab recherche environnement, which aims to reduce the impacts of buildings and infrastructure on the environment. Through lab recherche environnement’s work, a number of tools and solutions have been developed to preserve biodiversity in the urban environment.

Although Group entities have for many years developed strong partnerships with non-profits or research centres to support natural environments (nearly 1,000 agreements, of which 500 voluntarily, were signed or in effect in 2021), they have broadened the scope of their collaboration:

• – VINCI Autoroutes has joined forces with many national partners in France, such as the LPO, France’s leading agricultural union (FNSEA), the Shift Project, the national beekeepers association (Unaf) and the National Forest Office (ONF). At the regional level, VINCI Autoroutes urges its partners to work together to accelerate the energy mobility transition through its low-carbon motorway project (see paragraph 3.2, “Acting for the climate”). A joint financing agreement with the French government and Région Sud, the regional authority for the Sud region, formerly known as the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, was signed in 2021 to work towards smoother, more sustainable daily mobility. At the IUCN World Conservation Congress on 5 September 2021, VINCI Autoroutes and Région Sud signed the Zero Plastic Waste charter. Drawn up in collaboration with the Regional Agency for Biodiversity and the Environment (Arbe), the charter covers the preservation of natural environments, strengthening prevention efforts and reprocessing plastic waste. VINCI Autoroutes also works with a strong network of nature conservation organisations. For example, monitoring is carried out by CEN PACA, the conservatory of natural areas in the Sud region, which manages several outstanding sites, including the Joncquiers wetlands spanning 15 hectares;
•  – At VINCI Concessions, LISEA, the concession company for the South Europe Atlantic high-speed rail line, and MESEA, the line’s maintenance operator, took further steps in 2021 in their regional commitments and partnerships with the creation of the Fonds SEA pour la transition des territoires. Partners of this fund include France’s Natural History Museum and Ademe;
• – VINCI Construction has for many years been a member of professional associations, such as, in France, EGF BTP, the road association Routes de France as well as the national federations of civil engineering contractors (FNTP), quarries and building materials producers (Unicem) and aggregate producers (UNPG). VINCI Construction’s ecological engineering companies are active in France’s federation of ecological engineering firms (UPGE), and Eurovia partners with Inec, the French circular economy institute, contributing to its research and publications. VINCI Construction France is also part of the urban low-tech project supported by the French environment and energy management agency Ademe. Lastly, to bring concrete responses to the transitions needed in urban environments, Paris & Co is grouping its urban innovation activities under a single brand, Urban Lab. Its objective is to accelerate the process of putting measures into action, joint projects with partners, and the wider rollout of field-tested solutions. The platform includes an experimentation laboratory, a startup incubator, a social innovation support programme and a trend observatory;
• – In 2021, Eurovia continued and strengthened the partnership it initiated in 2012 with the Unité Mixte de Service (UMS) Patrimoine Naturel (a collaborative research and education entity focused on natural heritage, also known as PatriNat, under the aegis of three organisations – France’s Natural History Museum, the CNRS and the French Office for Biodiversity). Spearheading the industry, this partnership has structured Eurovia’s commitment on biodiversity preservation, which has included certain actions in its “Entreprises engagées pour la nature” programme. This collaboration includes developing scientific solutions and methods to assess the impacts of the company’s activities on biodiversity, such as the Ecological Quality Indicator (IQE) and a toolbox for assessing biodiversity around linear infrastructure (Œil) used by planners and quarry operators. Eurovia’s existing fauna and flora data have also been centralised and analysed to expand the national databases. In France, more than 50 local partnerships were formed with organisations such as the LPO, conservatories of natural areas (CENs), and permanent centres for environmental initiatives (CPIEs) to take concrete action to preserve biodiversity at its quarries;
• –  VINCI Energies France participated in a working group with the non-profit organisation Noé on public lighting data. The purpose was to encourage local authorities to improve the way they communicate their data and identify levers to reduce the impact of public lighting. VINCI Energies France Tertiaire Grand Ouest has formed a partnership with the LPO to better factor in biodiversity across its activities, while also lending financial support for the organisation’s projects of public interest. In Spain, VINCI Energies International & Systems has teamed up with several organisations to restore a forest located in a protected area, in particular by planting 4,200 trees, and then maintain it for five years.