Decarbonizing Transportation
An electric journey!
By Warda Djidjeli, Head of Quality and Environment for Major Projects in the Transportation Division, talks about Equans’ expertise in supporting the decarbonization of transportation!
Equans' transportation division is regarded as the preferred partner for companies in the transportation industry. What is Equans' commitment to its customers in this area?
We are committed to working alongside our clients to provide them with more sustainable, reliable, and attractive transportation options.
We support them on their path to carbon neutrality and address the challenges of performance, comfort, and attractiveness in transportation by building and renovating clean, high-performance infrastructure, digitizing user services, and transforming how infrastructure is used.
In practice, what are the major challenges you address in the public transportation sector?
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Electrify rail and urban transit, such as buses, subways, and streetcars.
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Ensure effective communication between different transportation systems and offer connected services, such as Wi-Fi, to passengers.
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Maintain signaling systems to ensure smooth traffic flow.
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Ensuring passenger safety and security.
Can you tell us more about the electrification projects currently underway at SPL Powerlines, a subsidiary of Equans?
Building on this experience, we aim to adapt the same concept in France. We have realized that dynamic charging for road freight—based on overhead line technology already proven in the rail sector—is a clear path to decarbonization to achieve carbon neutrality goals by 2050. In fact, road freight currently accounts for about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions.
What about the Grand Paris Express and Equans' transportation division in this project?
This massive metro project will connect Parisian suburbs without passing through the capital. Here, Equans’s transportation division is working, among other things, on the power supply project for Lines 16 and 17 of the Grand Paris network, a system designed to optimize energy consumption on the new metro lines.
The environmental benefit of the traction system lies in its ability to scale and distribute energy to provide a voltage suited to operating conditions, thereby improving energy efficiency. As part of this same project, we also ensure compliance with our clients’ contractual environmental requirements by conducting comprehensive analyses to identify and prevent environmental risks associated with our activities.
What specific measures are you implementing for waste management on construction sites?
For example, we are committed to our clients to manage our waste through source separation and tracking it until it is disposed of or recycled. To do this, we carry out awareness-raising initiatives as close as possible to our job sites to remind our employees of the importance of sorting waste at the source. We also ensure that waste—whether hazardous or non-hazardous—is properly treated and recycled in accordance with regulations.
Looking at all the work that's been done, how does it affect your daily life?
I am very proud to be part of an organization that contributes to the energy transition through its activities, in response to a challenge that is now recognized worldwide: global warming. Even though I am just a small and humble contributor, I am still proud to play my small part at my own level by managing the environmental aspects of major projects within Transport Système.
