Progress against emissions reduction targets
Projected emissions reductions are used to evaluate the progress made by the Group in reducing its direct greenhouse gas emissions between 2018 and 2030. These projections were calculated by consolidating the initiatives in this area planned by each of the Group’s business lines, based on their environmental commitments and their individual emissions reduction targets to be met by 2030. By tracking progress made in year Y against the Group target, the remaining emissions reduction to be achieved by 2030, expressed as a percentage, can be calculated.
Progress in year Y is calculated by comparing the value of direct greenhouse gas emissions reported in year Y to the value of direct emissions reported in 2018, after making adjustments for changes in scope between 2018 and year Y. Acquisitions during year Y−1 are included in environmental reporting as of year Y. Accordingly, progress in year Y is calculated by comparing the value of direct greenhouse gas emissions reported in year Y, adjusted to reflect disposals during the year, to the value of direct emissions in 2018, to which are added the 2018 emissions of the companies acquired in year Y−1.
The adjustment to the remaining emissions reduction to be achieved by 2030 that is attributable to changes in scope is calculated as follows:
In 2023, the 2018 baseline of the VINCI Energies business line was adjusted by 23 ktCO2 equivalent, due to the replacement of data that had been estimated in 2018 by actual data for that scope.
Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions
To calculate Scope 3 emissions for 2023, the recommendations published by the 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 the 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’s Building France Division did not take into account the downstream emissions of built infrastructure assets that do not directly consume energy, and the business line’s Road France and Networks France divisions 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 standard set by the French environmental regulation for new buildings (RE2020).
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 involved 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 kgCO2e/€ 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, which were adjusted for inflation. In 2023, VINCI expanded the scope covered by actual and estimated data to improve data reliability. Overall, 55% of Scope 3 emissions were based on physical activity data. 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 FDES, PEP or other Type III environmental declarations, supplier data, 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 the Base Empreinte® database managed by the French environment and energy management agency Ademe or the Ecoinvent database.
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 calculated for each business line for the current year, using Scope 1, 2 and 3 data from the Group’s environmental reporting. 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.
Cobra IS data was excluded from the calculation of the Group’s Scope 3 emissions in 2023.
