Veolia signs €2 billion waste management contract to support decarbonization and resource regeneration in Hong Kong

• Veolia is building a state-of-the-art storage site to optimize methane capture and thus avoid the emission of 10 million metric tons of CO₂ emissions over twenty years.

• A virtuous circular economy project with the green electricity produced from the captured methane covering 100% of the plant's energy needs.

• It is also a project that will generate local resources: the stone from the site will be used by the Hong Kong construction industry, avoiding imports.

Veolia, being a long-standing partner of Hong Kong SAR Government, together with China State Construction have recently been awarded by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) the contract to design, build and operate the West New Territories (WENT) Extension resource recovery project in Nim Wan, Hong Kong. Worth over 2 billion euros for Veolia, this contract will cover the entire lifespan of the project from the construction phase to the after-care period.

Designed to process up to 90 million tonnes of non-recyclable waste over twenty years, WENTX will be the largest asset of its kind managed by Veolia in Hong Kong. The state-of-the-art project will guarantee a 90% methane capture rate, reducing Hong Kong's carbon footprint as it aims to achieve an ambitious goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. It will enable to capture methane equivalent to around 10 million tons of CO₂ that corresponds to scope 4.

The purpose of introducing the scope 4 indicator is be to measure and recognize the ecological transformation, especially the decarbonisation of industrial and economic activities. Scope 4 avoided emissions, which quantify the CO₂ that would have been emitted into the atmosphere, correspond to the positive impact of the decarbonisation solutions implemented. Complementary to scopes 1, 2 and 3, it enables economic, financial and regulatory decisions to be steered towards global and collective decarbonisation of the planet.

The site will be a model of circular economy: 100% of its electricity needs will be covered by green electricity generated from the captured methane. Surplus biogas can be exported to the municipal grid in the form of electricity or town gas.

WENTX will also generate useful local resources for the construction industry: rock extracted from the site will be used for land development and will enable Hong Kong to reduce the dependence on imports.

"We are very proud to be undertaking this important project, which is part of a sustainable, less carbon-intensive future for Hong Kong. It is a major step in the ecological transformation of a region aiming to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Applied to waste management in a territorial circular economy, our ecology of solutions is at the service of this fine ambition", commented Estelle Brachlianoff, Chief Executive Officer of Veolia.

A historic partner of Hong Kong since the 1990s, Veolia contributes to the ecological transformation of waste and energy activities at the heart of the city's sustainable development goals of the region: resource conservation, environmental protection, recycling, and sustainable economic and social development. For example, Veolia built and is operating T-park, a world-class sewage sludge incineration plant to provide energy-efficient treatment for the city's sewage sludge. In 2022 in Hong Kong, Veolia operated 5.9 million tons of non-hazardous waste.