Estelle Brachlianoff (Veolia): "On sait ce qu'il faut faire pour éviter les restrictions d'eau"

Hello and thank you for having us.

You are right, it is almost always hot every year at this season, but in northern Europe we are also there, I am talking about water stress, I am talking about Scandinavia, Belgium, and even Great Britain. And for that matter, they are less used to it than in Aix, and it's not by chance, it's the direct consequence of climate change that we see on the multiplications of droughts, sometimes followed by floods a few weeks later. There. And what do we say to the climate skeptic when there are still some? All our barometers, where we test the population in the United States as in France or Europe, say the same thing. You have what you vote politically on one hand, but the reality of the facts is tough, and even when you voted for Trump in November, you know very well that when you have a problem of flooding or drought on your house, it's the direct consequence of climate change. We must expect water restrictions in the coming years. That will happen faster than we imagine. So what we know is that we need to act now, and if we act now, it will cost much less than acting gradually through crises and water restrictions. The cost of inaction is considered to be eight times more expensive to wait and react during crises than to invest now. The good news is that we know what to do to avoid water restrictions in France, not only this year, but in the coming years. We are talking about individual and collective behavior in companies or at home to avoid waste. We can achieve about 10% water savings at home by changing our habits a little. It's avoiding waste from leaks in the water distribution networks by using tools like artificial intelligence to detect leaks, recycling wastewater, and perhaps one day in some parts of France, even in Germany, recycling wastewater. In France, we are not very developed on that. I am not an expert, but until the summer of 2022, with the great drought we all remember, everyone thought France would never run out of water, so these are questions and solutions we never even considered among the general public or elected officials. Then the summer of 2022 arrived, and now many projects have been set up precisely to avoid finding ourselves in the same situation in a few years. So progress is rapid, but still insufficient, and I call for acceleration. You are right, reuse of wastewater, recycling of wastewater, is just under 1% in France. In Spain, it's 15%, and in the Middle East, it's around 90%. Even in the United States, on the West Coast, for example in Los Angeles, it's much higher. One day, we will be able to drink desalinated water, reused water. We are not there yet, but there is an economic model. There is a technical model, we know how to do it today, and we already do it, and economically too, we already do it. Desalinated water, yes, and recycled, reused water is another subject. What I am telling you, we do this in Barcelona, we do it in Namibia, and we have a project in Vendée.

For desalinated water, you remove the salt and you remineralize because if you remove all the minerals, it's not drinkable, I mean it's not good for human health. It tastes exactly the same as drinking regular tap water. Wastewater is the same. So there is absolutely no taste factor and obviously no health issue. It's ultra-controlled, it's completely normal. So there is a skill, a technique. Then we need to find the economic model, of course. The technical skill is there, we know how to do it. Veolia is a world leader in water technologies, reuse of wastewater or desalination. 18% of desalination plants worldwide have Veolia technology inside. I hope we are proud because I have the honor of leading a company that exports, a French and European company that exports its know-how everywhere in the world. The economic model also exists, and that is innovation in the service of purchasing power. You were talking about desalination. It used to be very expensive, especially because it consumed a lot of energy. We innovated, we reduced energy consumption by a factor of five to produce one cubic meter of desalinated water, and roughly five times the cost as well. So it becomes affordable, especially when there are not many alternatives in the Middle East or southern Europe, these solutions are already being implemented. After the root of the problem is perhaps also the fact that few French people, and I include myself, I admit, know the price of water. I didn't know, so I went to look, I saw around 4 euros per cubic meter depending on the region. Yes, that's exactly it. In the 4 euros per cubic meter, you pay for the production of drinking water, the distribution of drinking water, but also the treatment of wastewater, so in a way the cleaning that comes after. And there are also taxes, and that's all that makes up the 4 euros per cubic meter. You are not an exception, most French people don't know the price per cubic meter of water. In this case, it's less than 1% of household budgets. So that's probably why it's quite unknown. You can ask me where we stand in the European average. Well, we are in the good ones. We have a very good price-quality ratio in France, and it's not by chance. I make the link with companies like the one I lead, and we have competitors who are French world leaders. That's what allows us to have affordable water prices. Absolutely. At the same time, if it were more expensive, maybe people would be more aware. At the same time, when we survey the French, 58% say they are concerned about water stress. There is awareness, but at the same time, if we don't know how much it costs, there is no incentive. No, what all studies show us is that the French demand action, they demand solutions, and they understand that the issue is not only the price. What I am saying is the fact of thinking, 'Wait, imagine individually if for a few weeks I am not allowed to water my garden, if I am a farmer and I am not allowed to irrigate my crops, I potentially lose a whole part of my harvest.' An industrialist also needs water, and in the summer of 2022, some agri-food industrialists were forced to close factories for a few weeks. So we see that the debate is much broader than just the price of water, which as I said already has a very good price-quality ratio today.

No, I don't confirm that. I say we have a choice. As I said, the cost of inaction is much higher than the cost of acting today. If we wait for crises to happen one after another, if we do nothing today to address the issue of scarcity, to solve potential problems of water restrictions, if on top of that I add quality issues with pollutants that exist in a number of cases and need to be removed, and if I put all that together, then yes, we could end up with bills that increase. But the good news, once again, is that we have technologies, innovation, know-how that can allow us, despite these growing challenges, to keep the water bill at less than 1% of household budgets. But we still need to go to companies like Veolia to get the best in the world in terms of service, including maintaining an affordable bill.