To calculate Scope 3 emissions for 2020, the recommendations published by Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) in its Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions (version 1.0) were followed. Of the 15 categories of emissions identified by GHG Protocol, 11 were considered to be relevant to the Group (four downstream categories were excluded: downstream transportation and distribution, processing of sold products, downstream leased assets, and franchises). For some business activities, additional categories were excluded from reporting due to their lack of relevance to the business activity being assessed: VINCI Construction did not take into account the downstream emissions of built infrastructures that do not directly consume energy, and Eurovia did not measure downstream emissions. Where appropriate, some business lines applied other, more detailed industry-specific standards. This was the case for VINCI Airports, which followed the recommendations of the Airport Carbon Accreditation; VINCI Autoroutes, which used the tools provided by the Association of French Motorway Companies (Asfa); and VINCI Immobilier, which applied the new French environmental regulation for new buildings, RE 2020.
To calculate the indicator for greenhouse gas emissions by motorway users, using Asfa’s tool, VINCI Autoroutes included all the kilometres in its network, whether toll or free roads, travelled by users during the financial year. The velocity profile per vehicle class used was the default 130 km/h profile pre-configured in the tool. Traffic was assumed to be 100% fluid; the effect of radars was not included in the calculation. The influence zone of toll collection was assumed to be 0.1 km. The entire network was also assumed to be an intercity network.
The quantification work undertaken by the Group was hampered by difficulties in applying the existing guidelines to VINCI’s business activities and by complexities due to the breadth and diversity of its business mix. To overcome these obstacles, VINCI supplemented the GHG Protocol’s guidance with its own guidelines on specific aspects of the methodology, to be applied across the Group. These made certain adjustments to account for specific situations. For example, for VINCI’s works activity, the depreciation rule for machinery was adapted to reflect the reality on the ground and the available data. For VINCI Highways activities, a rule was applied to only calculate emissions from consolidated entities operating as concession holders.
Whenever possible, Group entities used actual data to calculate the emissions associated with their business activities. However, due to the complexity and diversity of these activities, some entities chose to apply ratios for a given business or to extrapolate from a representative sample of data to obtain an initial order of magnitude. For example, VINCI Energies worked out a kgCO₂eq ratio for each of its purchasing categories, drawing data from the 9,157 environmental and health product declarations (FDES) and Product Environment Profiles (PEP) that were available in 2020. A specialised outside firm then checked the ratios. Some entities also analysed the environmental impacts of a sample of projects in a business activity, and then extrapolated the results to the whole scope. VINCI Construction Grands Projets, for one, extrapolated the carbon emissions data of 32 projects, as evaluated by its internal tool, GES’tim. Based on the general orders of magnitude obtained using these methods, entities can then choose to focus on reducing certain categories of emissions and use a more precise method to measure them. Overall, 50% of Scope 3 emissions were based on actual data, 18% on estimates or extrapolations and 32% on ratios. The overall uncertainty of the resulting Scope 3 data is estimated to be between 20% and 30%.
In choosing emission factors (EFs), the same rules are applied across the Group. Where several EFs are available for the same category of emissions, entities are to give preference to the EF that is the most specific (for example, obtained from Type III environmental declarations, such as the FDES environmental and health data sheets or Product Environment Profiles, or provided by the supplier, a professional organisation or an industry trade union), the most reliable (having been calculated or audited by an expert and/or drawn from industry-specific or institutional guidelines), and the most recent (since EFs are updated on a regular basis). Where such emission factors are not available, default EFs in a database produced by VINCI are used. These are “average” EFs based on the main, widely recognised databases.If the desired EF cannot be found in the VINCI database, specific EFs are sourced from other documentation, mainly Ecoinvent or Base Carbone®, a database managed by the French environment and energy management agency, Ademe.
The Scope 3 emissions of some Group entities may be double counted, due to services being purchased from or subcontracted to other Group entities. These emissions were measured and deducted from the Group’s total during the consolidation phase using the following method: a ratio of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions per million euros of revenue was determined for each business line for 2019, based on Scope 1 and 2 data from the Group’s environmental reporting and Scope 3 emissions calculated for 2019. For each business line, emissions corresponding to purchases made from VINCI entities were measured by applying the ratio for the “selling” business line to the amount of all purchases made from that business line.
VINCI’s first assessment to determine the extent of the eligibility of its activities, as defined under the EU’s Taxonomy Regulation, was based on a detailed analysis of the Group’s activities at 30 September 2021, taking into account existing processes, reporting systems and management assumptions. The percentages of eligibility applied to the Group’s revenue and capital expenditure (CapEx) at 31 December 2021 were calculated at 30 September 2021, except for VINCI Autoroutes and VINCI Immobilier, which recalculated their percentages of eligibility at 31 December 2021.
To analyse the eligibility of the activities of VINCI Energies and VINCI Construction, the marketing segmentation of each business line, combined with the classification of the business line’s processes and areas of expertise, was applied. The main assumptions were tested for reliability using tests of details on samples of projects.
The eligible revenue of VINCI Concessions includes the revenue of VINCI Railways and that of the companies Caraïbus, Turas and Cofiroute USA. The eligible revenue of VINCI Autoroutes is an estimation of the share of tolls collected from zero-emissions vehicles. This figure is estimated by applying the toll revenue from light vehicles at 31 December 2021 to the percentage of all-electric vehicles on the road in France (an average of 1% for 2020 and 2021) and a reduction coefficient of 0.5, which is subject to change, depending on the growth of the electric vehicle market and infrastructure equipment levels. Sources: data compiled by Avere-France (www.avere-france.org) and Insee (www.insee.fr).
