Decarbonising building and infrastructure use
Eco-design
Eco-design involves the re-engineering of construction processes to limit the quantities of materials required or to use materials with lower emissions or recycled components. At VINCI Construction’s Major Projects Division, the Environment in Design (EiD) approach takes account of environmental issues right from the initial design phase (see paragraph 2.3.2.1, “Promoting the use of construction techniques and materials that economise on natural resources”, page 219). In 2024, the EiD approach was applied for several projects. For the Crédit Agricole bank in Montauban, a locally manufactured, cradle-to-cradle certified and 100% infinitely recyclable insulating material was used.
The Group offers a wide range of sustainable products and materials to its customers. Before these solutions can be made available, impact studies must be carried out to obtain tangible evidence of their environmental benefits. For example, VINCI Construction is continuing its life cycle assessments of several of its products, including high-percentage recycled roads and Power Road® technology.
To inform its eco-design choices and select the products that are best suited to customer needs, the Group also uses various tools to quantify greenhouse gas emissions. The e-CO2NCERNED carbon assessment tool was developed for use across the Group, but several other tools are also available to operational staff and their customers. VINCI Construction’s E+C− (positive-energy and low-carbon) calculator aims to assess a project’s compatibility against this label’s criteria. VINCI Energies has developed ECO2VE to guide the creation of low-carbon alternatives.
In keeping with these actions, VINCI Immobilier has officially discontinued the installation of gas-fired heating and hot water systems in its development projects and will now systematically include a low-carbon concrete alternative when bidding on contracts. To contribute to the decarbonisation of energy and development of renewable energy, VINCI Immobilier made it mandatory for all new residential property developments to carry out a preliminary assessment of the programme’s solar power potential.
VINCI Airports has also incorporated environmental and social clauses into its projects in the design or construction phase and requires that an environmental label be obtained (e.g. BREEAM®, LEED®, NF HQE™, etc.).
Rollout of energy efficiency solutions
For many years, VINCI has contributed to the decarbonisation of buildings and infrastructure through VINCI Construction France and VINCI Immobilier, which are both active in implementing the French RE2020 environmental regulation. The regulation aims to reduce the environmental impact of buildings, taking into account their energy consumption and carbon footprint throughout their life cycle, from construction to demolition, spanning 50 years. In this context, VINCI Construction’s Functional Structures delegations systematically include life cycle assessment (LCA) in calls for tenders for projects covered by RE2020.
Improving the environmental performance of buildings also means implementing solutions to optimise energy usage. In 2024, the VINCI Group’s revenue from the installation, maintenance and repair of equipment to increase energy efficiency was €1.6 billion (see paragraph 2.1.1.1, “Eligibility and alignment of VINCI’s revenue”, page 198). For example, VINCI Energies developed P2C software to optimise building maintenance and improve energy efficiency. The Wave platform has been rolled out at all of VINCI Energies’ sites in France and many of its customers’ properties, enabling the centralised and simultaneous management of multiple sources of energy consumption. The artificial intelligence of WiseBMS can predict indoor temperature changes based on outside conditions, by analysing a building’s thermal behaviour. Up to 40% of energy can be saved on heating and air conditioning, with no trade-off of user comfort.
In their role as integrators, VINCI Energies and Cobra IS are helping to drive the deployment of technologies to support their customers in moving forward with their energy transition. In France, business units under VINCI Energies’ Citeos brand managed 110 comprehensive performance contracts in 2024. As an example, under the 12-year contract awarded by the town council of Moulins in central France, savings of 74% are expected by the third year, notably by replacing public lighting and all traffic lights with supervision at intersections. In 2024, Sice, a Cobra IS subsidiary, led an energy services company (ESCO) project involving energy performance contracts that will enable energy savings of over 80% compared to current consumption levels, representing 1,063,399 kWh saved per year. In addition, ImesAPI, another Cobra IS subsidiary, installed 1,800 LED bulbs in Madrid and won a contract to renovate Barcelona’s public lighting.
Decarbonising motorways
Share of VINCI Autoroutes service areas equipped with EV charge points
In 2021, VINCI Autoroutes and the consultancy Altermind developed a model of realistic solutions for decarbonising motorways in France, which was the subject of the report “Décarboner l’autoroute : une urgence écologique” (Decarbonising motorways: an ecological emergency). They estimated the required investment for the transformation plan at €6 billion for 1,000 km and emphasised the need for all mobility stakeholders to work together to achieve it. In 2023, François Gemenne, Professor at HEC Paris and the University of Liège and a lead author for the IPCC, Patrice Geoffron, Professor of Economics at Université Paris Dauphine, and Géraud Guibert, Chairman of La Fabrique Écologique, launched the Alliance pour la Décarbonation de la Route (Alliance for Road Decarbonisation) to bring together a range of actors focused on the need to decarbonise road transport, including academic researchers, local authorities, non-profits and businesses, to design and implement effective solutions in this area. For the next ten years, VINCI Autoroutes will focus its efforts on the following priorities:
- promoting shared mobility, requiring a coherent response to drivers’ needs for carpool parking facilities, multimodal transport hubs and reserved lanes;
- providing electric vehicle charging stations to support France’s transition toward a 100% electric fleet of light and heavy vehicles;
- producing renewable energy by installing solar farms and canopies to meet the charging needs of light vehicles travelling on the network by 2030 (see “Supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy”, page 211).