Sustainable French Industry: Challenges and Levers for Acceleration — Panel discussion at Tech For Industry Show 2026 (Paris Expo Porte de Versailles), featuring Veolia, RTE, ENGIE and École Polytechnique.
How to reconcile sustainability, competitiveness and sovereignty in a French industry facing geopolitical instability, climate change and technological disruption? Four speakers share their perspectives, from the field to academia.
Key topics: the "urban mine" and battery recycling per Veolia (80% of sorted nickel is exported, Europe's first hydrometallurgy plant); the €8 billion investment and the shift from "first come" to "first ready" for data center grid connection per RTE (33 GW of demand); the decarbonization-competitiveness-security triptych and biomethane per ENGIE; and the need for green industrial policy in the face of strategic dependencies per École Polytechnique (50% of net-zero technologies still emerging).
Guiding thread: without competitive decarbonized energy, sovereign raw materials and knowledge transfer, there is no sustainable industry.
