Innovating to Accelerate the Energy Transition

Innovating to Accelerate the Energy Transition

The course of TotalEnergies’ history features a wealth of world firsts, revolutionary technologies, pilot projects and cutting-edge solutions. The pioneering spirit, performance-minded commitment and constantly renewed skills of our Company’s employees are the driving force behind our ability to innovate every day and continue fulfilling our role as a world-class player in the energy transition.

As part of our approach to get to net zero, together with society, we now need to focus our innovation and R&D efforts on sustainable development, projects and operations, and new energies. By drawing strength from our internal ecosystem, transforming our work practices, incorporating digital technology into our operations and working with our external partners, we are harnessing all the resources available to shape TotalEnergies’ future and build a lower-carbon world.

Getting organized to improve the Company’s capacity for innovation

With over 3,400 engineers, technicians and researchers at 11 sites and 15 R&D centers across Europe, the OneTech branch delivers daily support to our various activities as they strive to achieve operational excellence and break new ground. OneTech brings its technological and scientific expertise to the Company’s development projects, with special emphasis on reducing the carbon footprint of our assets, while providing support for our current operations and projects.

By putting digital at the heart of OneTech’s organization, the Company is extending its digital transformation to all its business sectors by deploying digital solutions to improve the performance of industrial operations, reduce their environmental footprint and provide new services to its customers.

Innovation Accelerator: innovation as a pathway to solving operational problems

The Innovation Accelerator was created in 2024 with the aim of identifying and testing innovative technologies that can be swiftly deployed to deliver solutions to our industrial sites.

In just one year, over 150 projects have already been developed, and several solutions are now ready for use.

Preparing for the future through our R&D activities

Our researchers are busy pioneering disruptive technologies and developing new industrial value chains. Every year, we allocate an increasing proportion of our R&D budget to drive the Company’s decarbonization ambitions. This decision to shift our research and innovation activities towards low-carbon energies underpins TotalEnergies’ transition.

1 billion
dollars invested in R&D, innovation and digitization every year since 2021
68%
of the R&D budget earmarked for low-carbon energies, batteries and a lower environmental footprint in 2024
~250 patents
registered every year by TotalEnergies

Our six Strategic R&T Programs

Mastering the key technologies for the energy transition must be a source of differentiation. TotalEnergies has identified six technological areas in which the Company wants to develop its excellence, focus and expand its research and technology (R&T) efforts through Strategic R&T Programs (SRTPs), with the aim of building competitive technological advantages.

In 2025, the Company adopts six Strategic Research & Technology Programs:

  • Two Strategic R&T Programs in the field of sustainable development:
    • The “Digital for HSE” SRTP
    • The “CO2 Techno Hub” SRTP
  • Two Strategic & Research Programs for Projects and Operations:
    • The “Digital Plant” SRTP
    • The “Near Zero Emissions Plant” SRTP
  • Two Strategic & Research Programs for New Energies:
    • The “Integrated Power Modelling” SRTP
    • The “BioHub” SRTP

Innovation and R&D in action

AUSEA: innovation to reduce our methane and CO2 emissions

Methane emissions come from many different sources (livestock farming, fossil fuel production and combustion, transportation, waste decomposition, etc.). A pioneer in detecting and quantifying these emissions in real-world conditions, TotalEnergies relies on AUSEA technology developed in collaboration with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne. It is one of the means we are using to achieve our goal of near-zero methane emissions in our operations by 2030.

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Sustainable aviation fuels: Airbus and TotalEnergies form strategic partnership

To address the challenges of decarbonization in the aviation sector, TotalEnergies signed a partnership with Safran in 2021 and a partnership with Airbus in early 2024, including an R&D component to accelerate the development of innovative technological solutions.

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Culzean: a leading offshore gas facility in the United Kingdom

Discovered in 2008, Culzean is a gas condensate field located in the North Sea, 230 km off the coast of Aberdeen, in an area that had long remained unexplored. Its reserves are estimated at between 250 and 300 million barrels of oil equivalent. The Culzean platform is one of TotalEnergies' flagship offshore facilities, both in terms of technological and digital innovations and in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions related to its activities.

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Integrating renewable energies: a full-scale laboratory in Denmark

Renewable energies are inherently intermittent, posing a real challenge in terms of integrating them into the electricity grid. How can we ensure a stable and reliable supply of renewable electricity to the grid, regardless of the time of day or weather conditions? To answer this crucial question for the development of renewable energy production worldwide, TotalEnergies has partnered with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) to build a pilot hybrid power plant. It enables researchers from the Company and the university to conduct tests aimed at optimizing the integration of solar and wind energy into the electricity grid.

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    TotalEnergies and artificial intelligence: a long history with a bright future

    Although TotalEnergies has been leveraging data and artificial intelligence since the 1990s to increase oilfield production and improve maintenance for our facilities, they are now playing a critical role in optimizing our industrial operations, reducing their environmental footprint and providing new solutions for our customers. As an example, we are using them to develop renewable energies by identifying the best sites for building solar plants and wind farms.

    Generative AI has also been adopted, as our employees have been using the Microsoft Copilot companion since 2024. Our teams also have access to the Microsoft Power Platform suite of low-code/no-code development tools to build their very own digital applications to solve everyday problems.

    In 2025, TotalEnergies and French company Mistral AI announced a collaboration to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) innovation in support of the Company’s multi-energy strategy, especially in low-carbon energies. Similarly, TotalEnergies and Emerson’s Aspen Technology business have joined forces to implement large-scale industrial data collection solutions across TotalEnergies’ operational sites. The aim is to leverage the power of continuous, real-time data collection to optimize the operational, energy and environmental performance of the Company’s sites.

    A Digital Factory to serve our business activities

    Created back in 2020, our Digital Factory brings together approximately 300 digital transformation officers, product owners, developers, data scientists, data engineers, AI scientists, architects and designers in the “Silicon Sentier” in central Paris.

    Since 2020, more than 100 digital solutions have been created and are gradually being rolled out in over 25 countries, 60% of which incorporate artificial intelligence, for a total of nearly 10,000 AI models in production.

    Learn more about our Digital Factory

    Electricity: accelerate the pace with TotalEnergies On

    To support our development across the entire electricity value chain, we rely on our TotalEnergies On startup accelerator. Hosted at STATION F, the world's largest startup campus, this program identifies and supports the growth of innovative digital solutions in the electricity sector, including renewable energy production, storage, trading, sales, and electric mobility.

    Find out more about TotalEnergies On

    Ready to join the innovation adventure at TotalEnergies?

    Check out our job vacancies

    Read more on TotalEnergies.com

    02/17
    2025

    Detecting Methane Emissions: TotalEnergies at the Forefront With TADI, the Only Experimental Platform of Its Kind in Europe

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    02/11
    2025

    Stories of Innovation: On the Origins of Our Use of Energy

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    01/24
    2025

    AI, Expediting the Energy Transition

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    12/17
    2024

    Integration of Renewable Energies: A Full-Scale Laboratory in Denmark

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    06/25
    2024

    #Energytalks – Harnessing Innovation to Address the Challenges of the Energy Transition

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    05/31
    2024

    TotalEnergies at VivaTech 2024: a New Edition Under the Sign of Our Ambitions in Electricity

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    04/24
    2024

    Ten New Startups Join the TotalEnergies On Program to Accelerate the Eenergy Transition

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    04/09
    2024
    The roads to carbon neutral

    The Roads to Carbon Neutral - Season 4 - Episode 2 - NASH Renewables: Harnessing Algorithms to Drive Renewable Energy Projects

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    09/18
    2023
    TotalEnergies On Batch #3

    TotalEnergies On: A Third Selection of Start-Ups Working to Advance The Energy Transition

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    08/29
    2023

    The Roads to Carbon Neutral – Episode 5 – From Waste to Watts

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    07/03
    2023

    The Roads to Carbon Neutral - Episode 3 - Racing to Renewables

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    06/23
    2023

    TotalEnergies at VivaTech 2023: Follow the Electron Path

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    04/17
    2023

    Innovation: TotalEnergies On is looking for new startups in the electricity and renewables sector

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    01/20
    2023

    Demo Days at Station F: What is TotalEnergies On's first assessment?

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