Using energy transition to reduce our environmental impact is a key challenge for the Energy and Services Division 

Energy Transition refers to all of the measures we need to adopt both personally and collectively in order to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in our daily activities and to replace them with what are referred to as green, renewable energy sources. The main challenges to be faced are protecting the environment and fighting climate change. One energy transition priority is energy efficiency. Through it, we can reduce our energy consumption and at the same time ensure that buildings, industries or towns perform satisfactorily. 

Bouygues Construction Energy and Services Division – made up of Axione, Bouygues Energies & Services, Kraftanlagen and Plan Group –are participating in this energy transition all over the world. Our experts are collaborating to transform energy use in regions, districts and infrastructures. They are attentive to all of the key stakeholders’ needs so that together, they can develop the right concrete solutions. 

When we talk about “Smart City” and “Smart Energy”, we are primarily talking about the means, the human, technical and economic factors needed to achieve them. We would like to share some examples with you. 

More sustainable territories

In cities, reducing the money spent on energy is achieved by effectively managing public lighting. In Dijon (France), the smart city OnDijon smart city project is anticipating savings of 65% due to the management of public equipment by the hypervisor, which makes it easier to control town street lamps remotely. This makes it possible to alter the brightness of the LED lights depending on the time of day and the area.  

This approach as a way to reduce public street lighting costs has also been adopted by the town of Ashford in the UK. Working together with our teams in the United Kingdom, they have upgraded public streetlamps with modern, energy-saving LED bulbs. The project has significant environmental and economic benefits. Not only do these savings enable them to reduce their carbon emissions, they also reduce the energy bills for local taxpayers. 

In Piolenc (France), the target is energy production. Almost 50,000 solar panels are located on a man-made lake in a former quarry, and in the course of a year, they will produce the equivalent of the municipality of Piolenc’s energy consumption for its 5,000 residents. This is the biggest floating solar power station in Europe. As a result, 1,096 tonnes of CO2 will not be released into the atmosphere. We have collaborated with our client, Akuo Energy, on this pioneering, innovative project. 

Axione’s expertise was sought out by Center Parcs to design and roll out an environmentally-friendly optical infrastructure covering 850 locations throughout the Domaine du Bois au Daim in France’s Vienne department. Our experts used a technical solution called POL (Passive Optical LAN) to provide very high-speed and highly secure connectivity services to park customers. Passive Optical LAN is based on passive fibre optic-multipoint architecture, and is a high-performance, economical and ecological solution. This technology requires very little equipment in the main building, so frees up 90% of floor space. As well as being shared, some of the equipment used is passive, so it needs no electrical supply. As the device’s traffic aggregation is only passive, its energy consumption is significantly reduced compared to other solutions - by 30 to 50%. 

More sustainable buildings  

In universities in recent times, sustainability has been placed at the core of almost all the strategic plans and policies, and many of them are opting to measure themselves against others in international classification systems. These institutions are coming under increasing pressure to show that they are mindful of their environmental impact because, after all, this can have an influence on potential students and employees. But these various stakeholders need to come together and work synergistically to achieve sustainable campuses. The University of West London,a public university in the United Kingdom, is an example of this.  

We have partnered with them to identify areas where we can assist them in making their ambitious environmental and sustainability goals a reality. These goals include 100% renewable electric power by 2025, incorporating the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDG), achieving the “Platinum Eco-Campus status, and many others. The immediate aim is to pursue the targets of redirecting 100% of non-dangerous waste away from landfill and to achieve a 55% recycling level by 2021.  

In Switzerland, the EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) also reached out to our to pilot and carry out the replacement of its heating infrastructure. This ambitious project will be keeping us busy until 2021. The existing heating and cooling infrastructure has come to the end of its useful life. As a result,there can be no new buildings built on the university campus. The new set-up must be more effective, future-proof, and move away from dependence on fossil fuels.  

More sustainable industries 

In Kiel, Germany, the coastal power station is making a major contribution to energy transition and setting new standards in terms of flexibility, efficiency and ecological sustainability with its production design that uses gas turbines, heat pumps and electrode boilers. Kraftanlagen has the responsibility for the planning, approval, provision of equipment, construction and commissioning of the electric power station with 20 gas-fired turbines.  

In coming years, the power station will be able to supply over 73,000 homes with climate-friendly district heating. In addition, the electrical power it generates will be pumped into the Kiel network to supply electricity to the homes in the capital and to nearby towns. The new station will emit 70% less CO2 then its coal-fired predecessor due to increased overall efficiency and the use of natural gas as an environmentally-friendly energy source.