Voltalia streamlines CSRD compliance and builds business value

Background

Founded in France in 2005, Voltalia has grown to become an international energy producer and service provider. The company specializes in renewable energy solutions.

Voltalia has operations in 5 technologies: wind, solar, biomass, hydro and storage, spanning 20 countries, across North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. 

Voltalia was the first company in its sector, and the second out of companies listed on the regulated Euronext market, to gain the French legal status of “Mission-Driven Company” (“Société à Mission”).

Voltalia is committed to reducing emissions from its activities across its value chain in order to limit its negative impacts and maximise its avoided emissions.

Voltalia has made ambitious social and environmental commitments through to 2027 and 2030, including:

• By 2030: 42% absolute reduction in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions (compared to 2022 baseline)
  – This target is aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and a 1.5°C climate scenario
  

• By 2027: Over 4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions avoided thanks to Voltalia’s activities
• By 2030: 35% reduction in emissions from solar projects built on behalf of Voltalia (in carbon intensity compared with 2022)

Challenge

Before working with Sweep, Voltalia managed its data in spreadsheets, however this proved unsatisfactory, according to Director of Sustainable Development, Marine Jacquier, who cites difficulties with data collection, reliability, and consistency.

Additionally, the team found it was spending too much time collecting and verifying the data it received.

This led Voltalia to look for a more effective tool.

Marine Jacquier says: “The biggest problem with spreadsheets is that they only let you collect data. When it comes to analyzing the data, giving it meaning and actually doing something with it, they’re much more limited than using a tool like Sweep.”

Voltalia found these issues a particular obstacle while using the spreadsheet method to compile its CSRD-aligned sustainability report: “Working on our CSRD report underlined for us how relevant Sweep’s platform is and how much time and energy it will save us, and really make us more efficient,” says Marine Jacquier. 

Solution

Voltalia turned to Sweep, to speed up its data collection, verification, and analysis, and to facilitate the sharing of data around the organization.

Marine Jacquier highlights numerous ways in which Sweep brought value to Voltalia, starting with speeding up the “double materiality” analysis. This is an essential component of any CSRD compliance exercise – and its acceleration has enabled her team to move more quickly to taking action based on the results.

“When it comes to CSRD compliance, Sweep already helps us a lot with the double materiality analysis. Being able to directly integrate our most significant impacts, risks, and opportunities, and identify our most material issues and then see the list of ESRS we need to address – that mapping is absolutely crucial and lets us focus our energy where we add the most value, instead of spending time on tedious tracking, which auditors expect.”

Sweep’s CSRD module gives the Voltalia team access to advanced functionalities, designed to cut CSRD compliance time by up to 75%, including: 

• Gap identification & data collection
• Data validation & approval
• Progress monitoring
• Internal controls & audits – detecting and correcting errors, duplicates, and irregularities in the data, and allowing users to track all changes
• CSRD report submission

Marine Jacquier underscores that Sweep makes it much easier for her and her team to achieve CSRD compliance, while streamlining the complex audit process:

“This all means we can refocus on topics where we add the most value: the qualitative aspects, explaining our strategy, making sure we address our material issues. 

Sweep brings a lot of value in helping us with CSRD.”