TotalEnergies will not set up its new ‘R&D’ center on the Polytechnique site





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PARIS (Reuters) – TotalEnergies announced on Friday that its new research and development center dedicated to new energies would be built in Saclay (Essonne), but not on the campus of the Ecole polytechnique as initially planned.

This project was contested by some of the students and former students of the prestigious engineering school and had earned the CEO of the group a complaint for conflicts of interest.

TotalEnergies explains in a press release that the building project in its own right near the Polytechnique campus “is subject to a significant delay in relation to the initial schedule and appeals which will require several years before they can be definitively purged and allow its construction”.

He adds that he has decided to set up “as planned, on the Saclay plateau” but specifies that the new center, which will bring together more than 200 researchers, will be set up in premises intended to accommodate business innovation centers.

Greenpeace France, Anticor and the association of former students of Polytechnique La Sphinx announced last April that they had filed a complaint against the group’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, and against X for “illegal taking of interests” after the green light given to the initial project by the board of directors of the school, of which he is a member.

In an interview published by Les Echos on Friday, the CEO of TotalEnergies once again denied any intervention, explaining that the installation of the research center had been decided before the board of directors of the school arrived.

“To put an end to this frustrating but damaging controversy to our reputation, we are abandoning the building project near the Polytechnique campus, while of course maintaining scientific partnerships,” he adds.

(Written by Marc Angrand, edited by Sophie Louet)









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