Decarbonization and Ecological Transition: Are Businesses Moving Fast Enough?

25/06/2026
16:51

reading time : 2 min

Lucie Monnot

Content Marketing Manager

Everyone agrees on the need to preserve the conditions for a habitable planet, first and foremost by decarbonizing human activities. Yet the implications of this imperative for businesses — and the timeline within which they must effectively “change everything” — are still widely underestimated. What does this mean in practice? We examine the question in the construction and transport sectors, two industries where decarbonization is an immense challenge.

Decarbonization and ecological transition: are businesses moving fast enough?

France is managing to reduce its territorial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to the latest estimates, they fell by 5.8% in 2023 compared to 2022, with all major emitting sectors contributing to this reduction (preliminary estimates from Citepa, 23 May 2024). Unfortunately, when it comes to CO2, the relevant scale is global — and on this point, the IPCC data is clear: global GHG emissions continue to increase by 1.5% per year, whereas a 5% annual reduction would be required to genuinely avoid the worst-case scenario: a planet that will be largely uninhabitable for a significant portion of humanity by 2050. So no, we are not moving fast enough — and above all, we struggle to grasp what decarbonization truly implies for key sectors of the economy such as construction and logistics.

The opening conference of SITL 2024 provided an opportunity to revisit the fundamentals of the transformation challenge facing these two sectors, whose carbon footprints continue to grow globally. How do we break out of this spiral? By working on “credible decarbonization trajectories” which, in the words of Fabrice Bonnifet, Director of Sustainable Development and QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety, Environment) at Bouygues Group, amount to reconsidering every facet of a company’s activity and “changing everything.” Changing everything, certainly — but without abandoning growth and profitability. That is the true challenge of decarbonization.

Decarbonizing the construction sector: the Bouygues Group example

In France, the construction sector accounts for approximately 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. While this is less than the global average — thanks to the share of decarbonized electricity (nuclear) in France’s energy mix — decarbonizing the activities of a group like Bouygues remains an immense challenge that demands radical changes and the simultaneous activation of multiple levers.

The first lever mentioned by Fabrice Bonnifet is the materials footprint. The construction sector still makes massive use of cement, the traditional production of which is highly CO2-intensive.

“Fortunately, there are now alternative materials, in particular low-carbon cements, and we are working with cement manufacturers to increase their share in our construction projects. But it will take time and it will be very expensive. So the solution we will continue to push for is the use of bio-sourced materials. There won’t be enough for everyone, as competing uses are driving up the prices of these raw materials. Faced with these difficulties, the strategy is to shift Bouygues’s activity, traditionally focused on new construction, toward renovation.”

Fabrice Bonnifet, Director of Sustainable Development and QHSE

Moving from a company that builds new structures to one primarily focused on renovation is a complex change in terms of organization and skills, but it is also an opportunity. In high-income countries like France, which are already very well equipped with infrastructure, “the challenge is to renovate this infrastructure by 2050 to bring it to acceptable levels of energy efficiency, with A or B ratings for housing and all tertiary buildings, which are also in great need of renovation.”

But these two levers will not be enough. Hence the need to establish new business models based on functionality — that is, the use of infrastructure and buildings. This means that, in the future, instead of becoming owners of buildings constructed by Bouygues and all the equipment they contain, customers will purchase only the use of those buildings. In this model, equipment suppliers — those who provide lifts, lighting systems, ventilation, etc. — remain the owners of the equipment and ensure its maintenance with a long-term perspective. This is known as “material as a service.” The advantage of this system? The possibility of doubling or even tripling the lifespan of equipment and recycling it more effectively at end of life, which represents a significant contribution to reducing the overall carbon footprint.

In line with this thinking, Bouygues Group is also working on intensifying the use of buildings. The utilization rate is 15% to 20% for public buildings and 25% for private tertiary buildings — extremely low figures. With the acquisition of Equans (former Engie subsidiary and leader in multi-technical services) at the end of 2022, Bouygues Group aims to support its customers in intensifying the use of their buildings by finding secondary users for spaces that are unused or underused. Maximizing building usage is a way of generating additional operating revenue and improving building profitability. This approach can partly compensate for what the company stands to lose by building less, and it comes with interesting co-benefits:

“This will allow us to address a challenge linked to carbon: biodiversity. We have over-artificalized soil throughout the northern countries, and over the next 50 years, we will need not only to stop artificializing it but to de-artificialize it. Intensifying and maximizing the use of existing structures will help us get there.”

Fabrice Bonnifet, Director of Sustainable Development and QHSE

Maximizing usage also applies to building car parks, which are destined to become shared electromobility hubs where both private individuals and professionals can charge their vehicles. The storage capacity of these vehicles will contribute to balancing the load curve of buildings. Fabrice Bonnifet notes that new and renovated buildings will increasingly produce their own physical flows and become energy-positive.

“Bouygues was a pioneer of energy-positive buildings — that is, buildings that produce more electricity than they consume over a year — so much more, in fact, that they will be able to interact with neighboring buildings to exchange energy flows with the help of digital technology.”

Fabrice Bonnifet, Director of Sustainable Development and QHSE

These few examples illustrate the scale of the changes that need to be undertaken to make the activities of a large company like Bouygues compatible with climate and environmental imperatives. Fabrice Bonnifet, who is also president of C3D (the college of sustainable development directors) and a board member of the Shift Project (a think tank founded in 2010 by Jean-Marc Jancovici), nonetheless highlights a truth that still unsettles most orthodox economists and business leaders:

“Yes, there are solutions to produce the world differently. For that, of course we will need technology and digital tools. But there is something that will need to be said openly and accepted: we will also need to slow down, and collectively come to understand that claiming we can always do more while consuming less is wishful thinking. This vision runs up against insurmountable physical limits. In a world of finite resources, infinite growth is mathematically impossible. The responsibility today is to say these things and to build transition plans that take into account the physical reality of the world we live in.”

What levers are available to decarbonize transport and logistics?

The idea of needing to, more or less, degrow is difficult to accept, as it runs so contrary to prevailing economic logic. It is even more so in the transport and logistics sector, which has become a crucial cog in our globalized value chains — indeed, a precondition for their very existence. The problem is that, globally, CO2 emissions from freight transport have been growing by 2% per year since the early 2000s. France has set extremely ambitious objectives: the National Low-Carbon Strategy aims for a reduction of nearly 100% in carbon emissions from freight transport by 2050.

To make this national ambition a reality, Anne-Marie Idrac, president of France Logistique, emphasizes the need for all stakeholders to simultaneously activate 3 levers: network, massification, and powertrains.

Network refers to the question of the location and relocation of warehouses across the national territory. If major strategic warehouses remain beyond French borders, in Spain or at the port of Antwerp, France is penalized by the number of kilometers goods must travel by road, which weighs heavily on its carbon footprint. The “zero net artificialisation” legislation does not make it easy to improve the national network, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to create large warehouses and logistics centers. The president of France Logistique notes, however, that “things are progressing relatively quickly and well on urban logistics topics, because a number of elected officials are making efforts to find spaces that are slightly less remote in order to serve the traders and other businesses in their territory.”
Massification, while primarily associated with the large freight-carrying capacity of rail and inland waterways, concerns above all the improvement of truck load rates and the drastic reduction of empty return journeys. “This optimization of capacity and routes fundamentally relies on efficient data sharing, which is not so easy to put in place. Many customers do not like the idea of sharing routes and are reluctant to share the data that goes with it.” Massification also relates to the question of packaging which, when it cannot be avoided, must be designed to take up as little volume as possible, be reusable, or at the very minimum easily recyclable. Ensuring its systematic collection after goods have been delivered is an integral part of reverse logistics, which is still in its infancy but must contribute to the overall decarbonization of the sector and the reduction of its environmental footprint.
Powertrain technology in trucks is obviously a central topic for the decarbonization of freight transport. The momentum driven by the European Union is decisively moving toward electrification, with roughly a 10-year lag compared to what happened with passenger cars in terms of vehicle production, standards, and charging infrastructure. Electrification of the fleet is still in its early stages and the transition will take time, especially if electric vehicles are to be French or at least European. Even as the offering improves, the price of electric trucks and commercial vehicles remains problematic for companies. Public financial support is indispensable for all players, but hauliers also have a role to play vis-à-vis the subcontractors they use, particularly for last-mile delivery. This is what Heppner is doing, as its CEO explains:

“We have invested heavily internally to transform our fleet, which is now more than 50% powered by green energy. We are trying different technologies: electric, gas, biogas. But it must be kept in mind that in a group like ours, 97% of emissions come from Scope 3 — that is, from our subcontracting — and last-mile delivery is an absolutely essential part of this. We are working with our subcontractors, who find it harder to change because they are smaller, less financially resilient companies. We are evolving our business model to offer them longer-term contracts, financing, and support on vehicle purchases. In 2023, 23% of our last-mile shipments were carried out using green means. We are targeting 30% in 2024, bearing in mind that we have always exceeded our targets to date.”

Jean-Thomas Schmitt, CEO of Heppner

This type of action shows that, more than in any other sector, decarbonizing transport requires enhanced dialogue and collaboration between partner companies and, more broadly, between all stakeholders. This is confirmed by the president of France Logistique: “For the past 3 years, we have been working collectively — logistics operators, hauliers, manufacturers, energy companies — to identify the different levers and define joint roadmaps, particularly on the question of powertrains. We are making quiet progress, at a pace compatible with the financial capacity of public and private players, because all of this comes at a very high cost.”

At this pace, and given the resources required, it unfortunately seems unlikely that the sector will achieve the goal of fully decarbonizing freight transport by 2050. But things are moving, stakeholders are talking to each other, and progress is being made on all 3 strands of the decarbonization strategy.

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