EDF / 2019 Universal registration document

1. The Group, its strategy and activities Research & development, patents and licences

3) Environmental acceptability of facilities The third priority is to improve the environmental acceptability of our production facilities. Climate change, the marked decline in biodiversity and Earth’s limited resources make EDF a legitimate choice for a low-carbon energy mix. The aim of the R&D Division’s initiatives is: through its scientific and technical expertise, to contribute to the way in which ■ the regulatory environment is implemented; to provide justification for our production facilities being on par with the best ■ available techniques, at an economically acceptable cost, and to leverage these best available techniques in new projects; to acknowledge and manage our impact on terrestrial and aquatic environments, ■ enhance the value of our improvement initiatives, limit and enhance the value of our sub-products; to know how to anticipate and address new developments in climate change, for ■ example by becoming more familiar with the robustness of the heat sinks for power plants in light of future climate change; As well as to study how water resource availability may change in the future as a result of changes in climate and physical geography; to contribute to leveraging our positive actions with regard to local stakeholders. ■ Therefore, for many years, EDF has set up research teams dedicated to biodiversity issues. In 2018, an ambitious research programme was launched to develop efficient tools to assess and control its impacts on biodiversity. Digital and societal transition 1.6.1.3 Digital transition impacts the entire electric power system and is a key driver of the electric and climate transitions described above. The information technology research programme focuses on: firstly, understanding and anticipating the impacts on the Group’s businesses and ■ the possible disruptions that may be caused by technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, 5G telephony, cyber security, blockchains, quantum computing, virtual reality; etc. secondly, maintaining and developing a cross-disciplinary ecosystem of scientific ■ computing to support the studies conducted by R&D and engineering. This digital transition is also synonymous with progress: the use of advanced digital techniques (deployment of virtual reality, use of metamodels or learning methods, etc.) has, in particular, enabled the Framatome subsidiary to increase the productivity of its engineering studies. In addition, a digital platform, based on cloud technology, is currently being deployed at EDF Renewables. It is designed to utilise EDF Renewables’ production data, from assets in all its territories, in the same “data lake”. The ultimate goal is to improve asset production and reduce operating and maintenance costs. Artificial intelligence is one of R&D’s research priorities, both its digital and semantic aspects. R&D has been instrumental in the dissemination of its methods within the businesses through its contributions to the adoption of data lakes, the launch of common platforms for data analytics and the Group AI Task Force. AI is a key aspect for the Group’s businesses: for power generation, AI makes it possible to mine decades of industrial data to ■ review maintenance strategies, build diagnostic tools that capitalise on the history of unforeseeable events, and develop functional digital twins to facilitate the management of installations; for energy management, AI serves the increasingly complex optimisation and ■ forecasting needs required by the upsurge in renewable energies, electric mobility, local energy systems and electricity trading; for distribution networks, AI facilitates maintenance planning, modelling and ■ resilience to natural hazards and smart grid management; for customer relations, artificial intelligence is used to improve the customer ■ experience, operational efficiency, and business performance. For example, stemming from its work to digitise performance studies for its industrial customers, Dalkia launched its “Dalkia Analytics powered by Metron” offer. This offer analyses energy flows and their interactions with customers’ processes in order to offer them high value-added solutions to improve performance. Dalkia has also developed the BIM Exploitation offer, which proposes Ready-to-Service buildings.

Blockchains offer another example of R&D’s significant contribution to the incubation of a new digital technology. Two years after R&D launched this project, the Group has various experiments in progress, including several pilot projects. Under the impetus of the Group Blockchains Task Force, a “Blockchain Lab” provides “end-to-end” expertise, from consulting to the operation of blockchain applications integrated into the information system, as well as an industrial policy and partnerships adapted to the challenges and level of maturity of these technologies. To support digital transition, R&D invests in powerful supercomputers that are essential for physics simulation studies and artificial intelligence machine learning models. More than ever, the various types of energy are also at the core of the challenges facing modern societies, with issues raised about its availability, its climatic, environmental, economic and geopolitical impacts, the resilience of energy systems, and access to energy for all. The goal to achieve energy transition by 2050 will require rapid shifts over the next 30 years in terms of uses, technical and industrial changes, and changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns. The challenge of carbon neutrality may cause unprecedented changes in the major systems that structure our lives. It is therefore essential to anticipate the societal and social consequences of these developments, in relation to the independent dynamics at work in society today. R&D develops specific tools to understand these societal issues and employs researchers in human and social sciences who work to understand these developments: the trends laboratory is an exploratory, multidisciplinary and collaborative system ■ that focuses on societal trends and identifies areas to be monitored and issues that are the subject of debate for EDF group. Finally, it explores certain emerging or fundamental topics in greater depth; the Design Lab places the user experience at the core of its approach. It engages ■ in various types of design (industrial, information, service, strategic) to develop industrial proposals and solutions; lastly, the close relationships that have been forged with the innovation ■ ecosystem (start-ups, fab lab, etc.) make it possible to envision new joint innovation practices. EDF’s R&D partnerships 1.6.1.4 To conduct its research and development programmes, EDF R&D develops a large number of partnerships worldwide, the purpose of which is to maintain its expertise at the highest global level in the disciplines central to EDF’s concerns, and to supplement its internal reservoir of skills. R&D’s partnership policy is embodied in a variety of ways, both nationally and internationally. In France, R&D has entered into framework agreements with major public research organisations. In 2019, the framework agreement with the National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS), the leading R&D partner both in terms of number and volume of contracts, was renewed for a term of five years. Over the past few years, R&D has also set up about fifteen laboratories on a joint basis with academic partners and technical or industrial centres. With them, it is participating in collaborative research projects funded by several national or European desks. Each shared laboratory offers an opportunity to establish a combined team in order to focus on a common scientific and technical problem, with a view to creating value, expertise and knowledge for all partners; this constitutes a major asset when taking part in cooperative projects. R&D also supports a few specially targeted teaching and research chairs. In the field of nuclear R&D, a three-way agreement between CEA, EDF and Framatome was renewed in 2017. This collaboration takes place within a Tripartite Institute, which aims to increase the coordination of R&D programmes between the partners and to structure programmes that are defined with reference to objectives, particularly industrial objectives, and that are carried out applying the technological building blocks of the Nuclear Plant of the Future. R&D is also active within the Energy Transition Institutes (ITE), which have been set up pursuant to the Future Investments Programme, such as the Île-de-France Photovoltaic Institute (IPVF), France Énergies Marines, which focuses on marine energies and offshore wind power, and Vedecom, which works on electric mobility. EDF group is also the driving force behind ConnexITy, an R&D programme aimed at connecting, through digital technology, players in the nuclear sector in order to simplify power plant operation, site preparation and design.

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EDF | Universal registration document 2019

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