Life Elia

ELIA manages the Belgian high voltage network, and its role is to transport electricity. The purpose of the high voltage network is to transport the electricity supplied by electricity producers to distribution network managers and large industrial users. In its capacity as network manager, ELIA ensures that transparent, non-discriminatory and objective access to the network is guaranteed. ELIA owns all Belgian network infrastructures between 150 and 380 kV and almost 94% of the network infrastructure between 30 and 70 kV.

ELIA's network is a key link between France, Europe's largest electricity exporter, and markets in Northern Europe.

ELIA's main activities are as follows:

• infrastructure manager: maintaining and developing the network, as well as connecting electrical installations to the network

• system management: granting access to the network in a straightforward, objective and transparent way, providing full services for transporting electricity, monitoring flows on the network to ensure that it runs smoothly and managing the balance between electricity consumption and production 24 hours a day

• market facilitator: developing initiatives to improve how the electricity market operates

The in-house activities of ELIA's Environmental Department are as follows:

• pollution prevention and treatment: to ensure that its operations and the development of its activities do not harm the environment, ELIA is committed to initiatives such as the permanent elimination of the PCBs contained in devices, placing transformers in tanks, respect for the soil, the appropriate use of paints on its pylons, protection against asbestos, limiting noise pollution and aesthetic nuisances, water drainage, waste management and optimising the existing network.

• protecting nature: the land used by ELIA is subject to environmentally friendly development and maintenance. As far as possible, ELIA's installations are built to be unobtrusive and indeed attractive for the local fauna and flora (provided, of course, this does not compromise network safety). This priority is reflected in projects such as installing nesting boxes for falcons on pylons and planting ecological hedges around posts, etc.

• combating climate change: to minimise the greenhouse gas emissions linked to its business activity, ELIA takes measures to reduce its energy consumption, particularly in its administrative buildings.