Sustainability in the face of world instability, the environment and technological disruption: the topic is broad, deliberately so. At Tech For Industry Show 2026 (Paris Expo Porte de Versailles), a panel moderated by Chantal Jouanno brought together Jean-François Nogrette (Veolia), Régis Boiserin (RTE), Florence Colombo Fouet (ENGIE) and Grégory Corcos (École Polytechnique) to confront the ambition of a sustainable industry with the difficulty of drawing its roadmap — where competitiveness, sovereignty, environment and technological performance can conflict.

Jean-François Nogrette proposes discussing sovereignty not through missing resources, but through those we already have and "make invisible."

France, with low growth, holds in its "urban mine" around 50% of its material needs. The paradox: it is Europe's leading country for sorting… and exporting its sorted waste — 80% of nickel, 70% of copper, 45% of waste wood. An environmental and cost-reduction logic, but not a resource vision, unlike China, which until 2018 imported 75% of Europe's sorted plastics before developing its own petrochemicals. A rising challenge: end-of-life batteries, growing from a few thousand tonnes today to over one million tonnes by 2035 (cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper). Veolia opened Europe's first battery hydrometallurgy plant — but metallurgy still goes to Asia, hence the need to structure the sector.

No one really knows their water spending, yet it's needed everywhere (energy, food…). When investing for 20-30 years, "the climate will change faster than the factory." Illustration: a liter of soda used to consume 5 to 8 L of water; know-how brings it down to 1.5 L. A future competitiveness to master factory by factory.

At Veolia (45,000 employees in France, spread across small branches), 30% of employees are over 50. Losing two or three departures at a 40-person branch collapses productivity. Hence an in-depth health check for the 9,000 employees over 55 (mobile units), and an experiment: filming elders' gestures before they leave to capture know-how with AI's help.

Régis Boiserin recalls RTE's mission: supporting decarbonization through electrification. France is 60% dependent on imported fossil fuels, but 95% of its electricity production is already decarbonized — a sovereignty asset. Concrete translation: €8 billion of investment by 2030.

The competitiveness challenge is less the price of electricity (framed by contracts for difference and PPAs) than connection lead times, on which France is challenged globally. RTE faces 33 GW of connection demand — nearly three times current industrial capacity. The "first come, first served" logic clogs immature projects; RTE is shifting to "first ready, first served" based on objective milestones (secured land, financial backing, permits, investment decision).

RTE anticipates investment in three major port-industrial zones (Le Havre, Dunkirk, Fos) and created fast tracks for data centers — sites under 10 km of line (no public debate), with land, water and telecom backbone. About ten sites identified, some exceeding a gigawatt. Illustration: SoftBank announced, under Choose France, over €15 billion to secure 2 GW of computing capacity in France. On sustainability: low-carbon concrete, steel/aluminum/copper recycling (a Nexans partnership for >30% recycled aluminum cables), and replacing the highly emissive SF6 insulating gas via a partnership with General Electric.

For Florence Colombo Fouet, an energy industry is sustainable only if it optimizes a triptych: decarbonization, security of supply and competitiveness. This triptych, already the basis of energy choices twenty years ago, was reduced in the 2010s to the climate issue alone — hence recent rejection (the CSRD example). Other messages: a sustainable energy sector is one that knows how to invest (30-to-60-year horizons), requiring a stable regulatory framework; and an optimization of all decarbonized sources — biomethane is rising from 16 TWh toward ~45 TWh targeted in France by 2030, a sovereign energy from agricultural waste and wastewater.

Europe has "lost" on solar panels, batteries and wind turbines (China installs 800 GW/year), but "not yet on AI." Two energy levers: attracting data centers thanks to decarbonized energy (the connection battle) and offering them PPAs. Key message: contrary to a common belief, a data center can be powered by renewables — 600 MW of solar + batteries in 18 months, the only pace comparable to that of data centers — without a mandatory gas turbine.

Fully robotized solar panel factories (one panel every 7 seconds); renewables now remotely controllable and coupled with batteries via AI; fine climate modeling (2 km × 2 km zooms of IPCC scenarios) to design resilient installations; and 24/7 matching between renewable production and large customers' consumption — up to 85% today, aiming toward 100%.

Grégory Corcos argues: reaching carbon neutrality requires transforming the productive apparatus (steel, cement, chemicals, transport), and the carbon price alone isn't enough. Industrial policy is needed to correct market failures.

According to the International Energy Agency, 50% of technologies enabling net zero by 2050 are still emerging (green hydrogen, biomethanization, bio-based materials) — the market won't produce enough alone. Add value-chain externalities (upstream decarbonization encourages downstream) and coordination problems (charging stations). Above all, strategic dependencies: for solar panels, batteries, permanent magnets, rare earths, cobalt, lithium, the concentration index often points to a single Asian supplier country.

Facing Made in China 2025 and the US Inflation Reduction Act, Europe has built the Green Deal and the Net Zero Industry Act since 2019 (target: 40% of net-zero technologies produced in Europe by 2030). The Industrial Accelerator Act, under discussion in the European Parliament, would bring together green industrial policy and that of downstream polluting sectors, with a key notion: the dependent strategic sector (over 50% of supply from a single foreign country), opening the way to public-procurement preferences ("made in EU") and conditions on foreign investment.

Answering a question from the floor, ENGIE stresses that adaptation is more complex than mitigation: it's local, not global. Three pillars: investing in climate science (internalized IPCC scenarios, IPSL partnership, local zooms); designing new assets "by design" to withstand extreme events; and, for existing assets (sometimes 20-30 years old), choosing between three options — accepting the risk (and restoring the asset fast), continuing analysis, or investing. The hardest issue: energy yield (e.g. a dam's future hydrology), which must translate into ROI-justified investment decisions.

Asked about Veolia's digital ambitions (220,000 group employees, all with AI access from their inbox), Jean-François Nogrette cites machine learning saving ~16% of electricity on a network, and the "Talk to my plant" tool: operators "talk" to their plant, which responds and, soon, restitutes an elder's know-how ("Bernard would have done it this way"), on a global scale. The decision remains human — all the more so as the group operates hazardous-waste plants classified Seveso upper-tier.

What is the "urban mine"? It's all the recyclable materials already present in our waste (metals, plastics, batteries…). In France, it would cover around 50% of material needs, but much sorted waste is currently exported rather than processed locally.

Why are grid connection lead times a competitiveness issue? Because large industrial groups and data centers put regions in global competition. With 33 GW of demand, RTE is shifting from "first come, first served" to "first ready, first served" to accelerate the most mature projects.

Can a data center be powered by decarbonized energy? Yes: according to ENGIE, 600 MW of solar with batteries can be built in 18 months, a pace comparable to that of data centers — a gas turbine is not mandatory.

Why does decarbonization require industrial policy? Because the carbon price alone isn't enough: innovation must be stimulated (50% of net-zero technologies are emerging), value-chain externalities corrected, and strategic dependencies on a few foreign suppliers reduced.

This panel was recorded at Tech For Industry Show 2026, the B2B trade show for industrial transformation (Smart Manufacturing, AI, Supply Chain) at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Watch the full discussion above, and join us on May 19–20, 2027, Hall 7, for the next edition.