Business Overview 2009 (pdf - 6.8MB) - Veolia Water

Our achievements / Pushing back the boundaries of our business
Éco Environnement
Ingénierie
Numerous projects for urban areas designed
to minimize their impact on the environment
have been developed in the past 15 years: the
BedZED ecological village (UK), the Vauban
District in Freiburg (Germany), Masdar City
planned for 2015 (Abu Dhabi), etc. Right from
their design stage, these model sites include
ambitious goals for local water management,
energy consumption and the ecological
footprint of housing and transportation.
Veolia Environnement’s Éco Environnement
Ingénierie (2EI) consultancy and engineering
firm specializing in sustainable urban
development was created to provide, through
partnerships with urban planners and
architects, solutions to sustainable urban
project developers. With the support of the
technical departments of Veolia
Environnement’s four divisions and R&D, 2EI
directs development projects toward an
economic and environmental optimum
incorporating local solutions (recycling
stormwater and surface runoff after
treatment, solar panels, pneumatic waste
collection, etc.), and solutions based on the
installation of public utility networks (water
management master plan, mass transit,
heating networks fired by biomass, etc.). Since
its creation in 2009, 2EI has been awarded an
environmental and urban analysis contract
for the Esplanade mixed housing
development in Grenoble, France, and the
environmental assessment (with a major
section on modal shifts) for the creation of the
future Nice TGV high-speed rail multimodal
center (France).
their future needs. This brings the company to review
the scope of its business at regular intervals. In Europe,
for example, in the past few years, there has been increasing
focus—with varying degrees of controversy depending
on the country—on the issue of rainwater harvesting
for domestic or industrial uses. As a responsible operator,
Veolia Water is obliged to take a stance on this issue.
In France, where legislation now allows this practice
for certain applications, the company is seeking the best
way to reconcile the use of this alternative water resource
and public health issues. We have installed several units
for single dwellings and for apartment blocks.
It is often in helping clients deal with emerging issues or
to comply with increasingly stringent environmental
regulations that Veolia Water advances even further down
the path to innovation.
After having established its offer for identifying hazardous
substances in effluent (see page 32), Veolia Water is now
assessing the solutions it may be able to present to
its clients to help them reduce the use of these same
substances in their processes or to treat them.
Additionally, we are examining the possibility of recovering
these substances efficiently and cost-effectively,
through differential flow treatment.
25,000
The number of employees worldwide involved
in Veolia Water’s Innovation and Continuous
Improvement approach. Almost 3,000 ideas
for improvements have been received.
Anticipate major changes
Looking further ahead to save resources, Veolia Water
and its subsidiaries pool their expertise to make progress
in industrial ecology. They focus on identifying tailored
solutions, especially materials recovery, an area where
widely varying and complex needs require a high level
of technical expertise.
Again looking to the future, Veolia Water is preparing
a revolutionary concept: the wastewater treatment plant
of the future. This major technological leap will see
the treatment plant turn into a bio-refinery, capable
of recovering wastewater as a “raw material” for the
production of added-value products (see box page 47).
This new-generation plant is a link in the sustainable city
of the future that will include, right from its design phase,
environmental services (water, transportation, energy and
waste management). Veolia Environnement’s
Éco Environnement Ingénierie (2EI) consultancy
and environmental engineering firm is developing
this vision of the sustainable city as part of concrete
development projects. It relies on the expertise of
Veolia Water and the three other Veolia Environnement
divisions (see box page 46).
46 Veolia Water 2009