Under the exotic skies of Tahiti, the main island in French Polynesia, Societe Generale employees have put the preservation of the environment at the very heart of their daily lives. Indeed, since April, the Faa’a branch’s members of staff have been pioneers: they now work in a building that is almost entirely fuelled by its own electricity production. As the Head of the Polynesian subsidiary, which has 20 branches across Tahiti and the archipelago’s most inhabited islands, I can say in all modesty that I am behind this innovation.

In late 2008, during major renovation of the Faa’a branch, I wanted to do something with renewable energy that would be both innovative and symbolic. Beyond the fact that current tax regulations allow this type of operation to be economically profitable in a relatively short period of time, I’m very sensitive to this kind of thing, as are my teams who are very proud to belong to the pioneering bank branch in this respect.

It took three months to renovate the offices using two main guidelines. Firstly, efforts in terms of energy savings: insulation, construction of skylights, installation of air-conditioning systems that react to human presence and low-energy lamps. Then, in order to fuel all this, the branch’s roof was covered with solar panels and batteries able to store energy for two days. The renovated branch is now 35% bigger than it was before, but our electricity consumption has been almost halved. Since April, we are 93% autonomous thanks to our own electricity production.

And this is just the start. Next year, I’m planning to equip one of the Group’s two head offices in Tahiti in the same way, which will enable us to produce half of our electricity requirements ourselves. Proof that, on the other side of the planet, our energy is not only renewable, but more importantly it is inexhaustible.