SUEZ’s New Charter: Leading a Shared Decarbonized Future

While carbon emissions are typically linked to transportation, heating, and heavy industry, greenhouse gases also originate from less obvious sectors. A significant, yet often overlooked, contributor is the water and waste management industry, which, despite its critical role in public health and environmental protection, generates a substantial carbon footprint. Suez, a global leader in this vital environmental services domain has committed to an ambitious decarbonization journey, and is now proving that climate action is not a fight for one, but a common cause. 

A report titled “Decarbonizing Water: Applying the Voluntary Carbon Market towards Global Water Security,” from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and Castalia, underscores the substantial climate impact of the water and waste management sectors. It estimates that water-related projects globally could generate over 1.6 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in carbon credits annually, highlighting a significant, untapped potential for emissions reduction. Concurrently, the waste sector alone accounts for 3.3% of overall greenhouse gas emissions. For organizations operating within these sectors, decarbonization presents inherent complexities and operational challenges distinct from those encountered in other industries. Successfully addressing these obstacles is paramount, promising a contribution to global climate action efforts, as evidenced by example of Suez, one of the world’s largest water and waste management companies 

Confronting the inherent complexities of decarbonization within its sector, the company’s strategy extends beyond its own operations, guiding clients away from the traditional, resource-depleting “take-make-dispose” model. Instead, Suez champions a regenerative “use-and-recover” paradigm, leveraging its expertise to implement circular economy principles. This approach positions Suez as both an essential solutions provider for its customers and a key operator driving industrial transformation. 

From Global Challenge to Operational Solutions 

Achieving global decarbonization goals is both technically complex and financially daunting. While renewable energy sources like solar and wind are now cost-competitive, the immense technical challenge lies in overhauling our entire energy infrastructure, including modernizing grids, developing storage for intermittency, and decarbonizing hard-to-electrify sectors like heavy industry and waste management. Financially, this transition requires immense upfront investment, posing a significant burden, particularly for developing nations, and necessitating a coordinated global effort and expertize to fund and deploy technology at an unprecedented scale. 

To assist its clients with this challenge, the company relies on 2023-2027 Sustainable Development Roadmap. Generally, the Group’s strategy in this direction is based on the Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) approach, which employs modern technologies for carbon emissions management. The company analyzes diverse carbon capture processes to deploy the most suitable technologies for each specific project, and subsequently focuses on converting the captured CO2 into high-value products, thereby fostering a circular economy. 

One of the most notable technologies in this area is sewage sludge-to-energy plants, which transform a problematic waste stream into a valuable renewable energy source. These facilities primarily utilize anaerobic digestion to capture methane—a potent greenhouse gas—that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere from landfills or uncontrolled decomposition. The captured biogas can then be upgraded to biomethane (renewable natural gas) for grid injection, or directly combusted to generate heat and electricity. This process displaces fossil fuel consumption and reduces Scope 1 and 3 emissions, offering environmental and economic benefits for municipalities and industries. 

One of Suez’s recent projects in this area is a sludge incineration plant for the Chinese utility Dongguan Water Group, which the company is designing and building in Dongguan, China. The facility is engineered to process 2,000 tons of municipal sludge daily, transforming a challenging waste stream into a source of heat and power. By displacing electricity from the local grid, the plant is projected to prevent approximately 55,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually. For China, a nation grappling with industrial growth and escalating energy demands, and one of the world’s largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, such waste-to-energy solutions are critical for managing waste streams, reducing its carbon footprint, and advancing its climate change mitigation goals. 

Beyond large state projects, Suez provides solutions that offer a viable alternative to traditional fossil fuel-based energy, specifically targeting heavy industries. These sectors face their own challenges in transitioning to renewable energy sources like solar or wind power as high energy demands and need for a constant, stable power supply cannot always rely on intermittent electricity supply that comes from renewables. 

Suez offers a proven solution addressing these hurdles, particularly in sectors like cement production, which is more carbon-intensive than even the aviation industry. This solution is Climafuel®, an alternative fuel derived from non-recyclable waste, specifically used to heat the kilns at Cemex’s Rugby cement plant in the United Kingdom. Approximately 70% of the input material there comes from regional businesses, with the remaining 30% derived from household waste, much of it sourced from Northamptonshire County Council. The bulk of this waste would otherwise be destined for landfills, but the solid recovered fuel (SRF) process employed by Suez allows for the extraction of valuable recyclable materials that, due to contamination, would be unviable to process through conventional recycling methods. Since 2015, this technology has reduced coal consumption by over 750,000 metric tons, directly contributing to a reduction in Cemex’s carbon emissions and supporting the broader construction industry’s transition towards a more circular economy. 

Decarbonization from the Inside Out

Beyond its client-facing solutions and as part of its Sustainable Development Roadmap, the Group also confronts the challenge of reducing its own operational emissions. For a water and waste management company like Suez, implementing carbon capture is technically challenging because emissions are often diffuse and low-concentration, originating from diverse sources like biological decay in landfills and wastewater treatment processes. Capturing this carbon requires integrating complex, energy-intensive scrubbing technology into existing facilities that were not designed for it, making retrofits difficult and costly. 

Nevertheless, the company is proving that decarbonization is an achievable goal, demonstrating a viable path to decarbonization for the entire sector. On its way to achieve its target, the company has already boosted its renewable energy supply in 2024, leveraging a combination of renewable energy certificates, power purchase agreements, and self-generated biogas. These efforts to decarbonize overall operations resulted in a 6.2% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions compared to 2023, a significant achievement primarily driven by initiatives at its global waste storage sites. 

One of the latest milestones for the company in this direction is the new carbon unit for Terres d’Aquitaine , a site SUEZ has operated in France since 2006. Representing an investment exceeding €22 million ($25.8 million), this facility integrates an advanced organic waste valorization process, encompassing the collection of supermarket and agricultural waste, composting, biomethane generation, and the production of certified soil amendments. 

Inaugurated on June 30, 2025, the carbon unit targets carbon capture from the anaerobic digestion of biowaste, providing a localized solution for emission reduction and supporting sustainable agricultural practices. Co-financed by the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, the facility is projected to capture up to 3,500 tons of CO2 annually. Instead of venting this biogenic CO2 into the atmosphere, SUEZ purifies and liquefies it on-site, utilizing V’COOL® technology developed in partnership with PRODEVAL. The captured carbon is already being supplied to greenhouse tomato producers in southern France, enabling them to replace fossil CO2, boost crop yields, and reduce their own emissions.  Overall, Suez’s commitment to decarbonization reflects the growing understanding that addressing climate change demands a comprehensive approach, extending beyond optimizing own internal operations. For an industry whose core mission involves ensuring access to clean water and managing waste, this presents a unique challenge: tackling both its own environmental footprint and those of its partners. This dual focus creates a synergistic cycle: internal learnings from Suez’s pursuit of net-zero goals directly enhance the efficacy, practicality, and scalability of its client offerings. Simultaneously, insights gathered from varied client needs drive further internal research, development, and innovation. Pierre Pauliac, Chief Operating Officer Water, emphasises the importance of innovation in the Group’s activities. ” At Suez innovation is a concrete, decisive driving force: over 60% of the major contracts we won in 2024 include innovation. Our target is 80%, as pioneers of change and resilience, alongside our customers. Suez continues to innovate for what is essential: water preservation, decarbonization and waste valorization, to deal with increasing environmental pollution and scarcity of natural resources ”. This integrated strategy not only positions Suez as a contributor to the global transition toward a sustainable, low-carbon future, influencing change across diverse sectors, but also underscores the essential, collaborative effort required from all industries to achieve meaningful environmental progress