Climate change mitigation & air emissions

Controlling and reducing carbon emissions

Elia has been conducting a carbon assessment since 2010 to identify direct and indirect emissions resulting from its activities in Belgium. We are also taking steps to control and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, in 2020, we launched our Act Now program, identifying actions aimed at fighting climate change. We are committed to the fast decarbonisation of society to ensure the successful implementation of the Green Deal. We are therefore aiming to become carbon-neutral by 2040.

Responsibilities for goal setting, implementation, monitoring and follow-up are identical to the overall responsibilities regarding the environmental management system.

Our Carbon footprint

The carbon emissions caused by companies are generally divided into three categories, or ‘scopes’. These are outlined below.

Amongst all of our activities, grid losses represent the biggest share of Elia’s carbon emissions. Grid losses are calculated as the difference between the amount of electricity entering our grid and the amount of electricity  taken off by consumers. Grid losses are directly related to the amount of electricity transmitted over long distances. Losses are already a key component in our upstream decision making process on the development of the grid. Opportunities to further reduce grid losses are limited. The Elia Group will however keep exploring all options to reduce as far as technically possible the losses caused by new assets in the future grid development. 

The use of SF6 gas is very specific to the power sector, and Elia is able to directly influence its use through maintenance and asset policies. This is why we give particular attention to emissions related to SF6. 

As a Group, we want to become carbon-neutral by 2040 and are hence committing to the following key objectives:

1. enabling the decarbonisation of the power sector;
2. establishing carbon-neutral system operation by 2040;
3. ensuring that our own activities are carbon-neutral by 2030;

We want to focus on improving the carbon balance of our activities, rather than on reducing particular emission scopes, since emissions from one scope can be related to several different activities.

Our greatest focus will be on enabling the decarbonisation of the power sector because it reduces both society’s and our own CO2 emissions. However, taking up our societal responsibility also requires us to work directly on the reduction and control of our own emissions.

Enabling the decarbonisation of the power sector

With regard to climate change, as a company which encompasses two transmission system operators (TSOs), we make a substantial contribution to the decarbonisation of the power sector through the following activities.

Achieving carbon neutrality in our system operation by 2040

As a second objective, we want our operations to be carbon-neutral by 2040. To this end, it is important that we act on the grid losses that represent the vast majority of Elia Group’s CO2 footprint. These are unavoidable and depend on voltage and length among other factors. They take the form of current heat losses along transmission lines, transformers and other system elements as well as leak and corona losses. 

Due to the integration of renewable energy sources into our grid (which is our first dimension objective), the CO2 emissions generated by grid losses will significantly  decrease in future. As TSO’s we take losses very seriously and they are and will remain a key component in our decision making process when acquiring new assets or building new lines. As a group, we are exploring various options to purchase these losses using only renewable energy sources.

Finally, we are exploring options to reduce emissions associated with balancing and dispatching activities. 

Achieving carbon neutrality in our system operation by 2030

Alongside our first two objectives, we are committed to the decarbonisation of our own activities. 

Mobility at Elia Group

Air emissions (such as gaseous pollutants of sulfur oxide SOx and nitrogen oxide NOx) are not produced as a direct consequence of our activities. However, some air emissions are still produced through the commuting of our employees, for example. To mitigate these emissions and, given our Act Now programme, a new transport and commuting programme has been set up called “Orange is the new green”. This aims to transform our employees’ conception of transport and encourage behaviour change. The programme will focus on:

Sustainable buildings

The emissions related to our buildings can be divided between emissions related to our non-core activities (i.e. our administrative offices) and those related to our core activites (i.e. the emissions from buildings in our substations). As part of our Act Now program, Elia is investigating energy efficiency gains which can be achieved in our substations.