2
89
Annual Report -
2013
-
Vivendi
Societal, Social and
Environmental
Information
Key Messages
Managing the Vehicle Pool
: in an effort to limit the impact of
business travel and commuting, SFR’s second largest source of CO
2
emissions, the operator has made two improvements: reducing
travel by using teleconferencing and making travel more efficient
(such as using train travel rather than airline travel and including
hybrid vehicles in the vehicle pool). Canal+ in France has gradually
replaced its car fleet with less polluting vehicles, which, over the
past five years, has enabled it to reduce its CO
2
emissions rate by
30 g/km per vehicle. Vivendi SA has introduced hybrid vehicles.
UMG in Santa Monica (USA) has provided its employees with six
locations for recharging electric cars.
Managing Electrical and Electronic Equipment
: the initiatives
taken by headquarters (virtualization of servers, switching to IP
(Internet protocol) telephony, reducing equipment such as fax
machines and managing equipment at the end of the life cycle)
have helped to reduce the energy impact of computers. Rigorous
management has enabled Canal+ in France to recover nearly
5,500 pieces of equipment (including PCs, monitors, servers
and printers), leading to significant gains from not placing new
equipment on the market (872 tons of CO
2
emissions avoided,
5,700 m3 of water saved and 1,121 tons of fossil fuel not extracted).
Controlling Upstream Impacts
: As part of an effort to offset
energy, Universal Music France has agreed to diversify its sources
of electrical supply by purchasing EDF “Balance+” contracts. For EDF
this means injecting electricity into the network from renewable
sources, in a certain amount defined by contract. Other initiatives,
like those carried out by GVT to encourage environmentally
responsible purchasing and promote relations with suppliers which
are environmentally responsible themselves, also reflect this desire
to involve the value chain in this energy-saving policy.
4.1.3.
Digital Challenges: the Environmental Issue
The Group’s business units are offering their customers an ever-
increasing range of creative digital content and high-speed access
services. Thus, in 2013, digital content accounted for more than 50%
of total sales of recorded music by Universal Music Group (compared
with 39% in 2011). UMG is diversifying access to its content via digital
platforms such as Vevo (a hosting service for music videos 47% owned
by UMG) or other platforms such as Spotify, Deezer and Rhapsody.
Canal+ Group has also launched its offering to major Internet distribution
platforms such as YouTube in France, where it offers 20 free channels,
and Dailymotion in Canada, which it uses to distribute video series, films
and documentaries by subscription. The Group has also announced the
acquisition of Studio Bagel, the premier comedy network on YouTube in
France with more than 6 million subscribers and 40 million views per
month. The new Canal+ Group application, the MyCanal app, allows its
subscribers to receive Canal+/CanalSat programs on all screens, both
live and on demand. Finally, Canalplay ranks among the leaders of VOD
by subscription in France, with a subscriber base that has more than
doubled in a year, and, in March 2014, reached 400,000 subscribers. A
player in telecom and media, GVT, one of the most efficient high-speed
companies in Brazil, is striving to satisfy its customers with an offering
of diversified content. Its Pay-TV business launched two years ago has
attracted 600,000 subscribers.
In this context of increasing electronic exchange, with the
accompanying explosion of new uses, a better grasp of the digital
environment footprint is needed. The CSR department has set up a
committee to deal with the topic of “Information and communication
technologies (ICTs) energy consumptions”. Bringing together the legal
and technical officers of Universal Music France, Canal+, SFR and
Vivendi headquarters, as well as a sociologist and an expert from the
Audiovisual and Telecommunications Institute in Europe (IDATE), this
Committee has elicited a number of productive discussions. Members
of this Committee have applauded this initiative and have demonstrated
their desire to continue the committee’s brainstorming efforts in order to
better evaluate the environmental impact of the different players in the
value chain. The value chain involves, among others, content creators
using the services of data centers, network operators which must adapt
their infrastructures to increasingly exacting demands in terms of speed,
consumers increasing the number of “on demand” uses on different
media (such as tablets, smartphones, connected televisions and
computers) as well as manufacturers. Thus, in 2014, the decision was
made to create a working group made of representatives of business
units to further explore this specific environmental issue, so far largely
unexplored.
