Colas is participating in the COP21 at the Parc des Expositions Paris-Le Bourget from November 30 to December 11, 2015. As an official partner of the UN Climate Change Conference, the Group has installed at the site’s entrance a 20 m² section of its Wattway photovoltaic road surfacing, a cutting-edge innovation that was officially launched last October.

Colas is also presenting Wattway along with a number of other innovations (smart mobility, pavement preservation solutions, etc.) at the Bouygues stand (E51), in La Galerie des solutions, from December 2 to 9, 2015 at the Paris-Le Bourget Air and Space Museum. Colas will lead a roundtable discussion on “Fighting climate change: the road forward” from 11:30 am to 12:15 pm on Thursday December 3.

The Wattway Solar Road, an innovation with a role to play in the energy transition

Developed in partnership with the French National Solar Energy Institute, Wattway is the world’s first ever photovoltaic road surfacing which harvests solar energy to produce electricity. Wattway can be installed on all types of roads, directly on the existing pavement, with no need for civil engineering work. The very thin panels are sturdy, skid-resistant and designed to last. A mere 20 m² of Wattway can produce enough electricity to supply a single household (not including heating). One kilometer of roadway paved with Wattway panels can power the streetlights in a town of 5,000 inhabitants (source: Ademe). In urban areas, Wattway is designed to play a role in Smart Cities, as it provides renewable energy as close as possible to the zones where consumption is the highest and demand continues to rise. In remote locations, where low population densities make the cost of hooking up to the electrical network prohibitive, Wattway can turn existing road infrastructure into a short-circuit means of producing local, sustainable energy.