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

02/11/2025

Our Stories of Innovation series covers topics ranging from the urban electricity revolution to methane detection technologies, inviting you to learn how the innovations that have changed the world of energy came about. Let our employees guide you through these fascinating stories!

Seismic reflection

A key technology in the discovery of oil deposits, the first seismic imaging dates back to 1921. It has since been replaced by detailed 3D images, which are vitally important tools for optimizing oilfield production and ensuring the security of drilling operations. Today, seismic reflection is being adapted to support the development of certain renewable energies, such as offshore wind power.

Patrick Charron, Senior Seismic Processing Specialist: My geologist and geophysicist friends think they have found a new oil field. But before they get too excited, we have to confirm that. Here’s how I can help!

Welcome to Stories of Innovation, a series of podcasts from TotalEnergies. In each episode, our employees explain how the innovations that have changed the world of energy came to light. Want to find out more? Let's go!

Patrick Charron: Oil fields are underground, that’s obvious. So to find them, we need to explore the ground. But to know where to explore, we need an image of the subsurface. This basic idea today, but originally brilliant, was the brainchild of US engineer John Karcher. In 1921, he proved that sending acoustic waves into the ground made it possible to produce an image of the subsurface. By measuring and analyzing the wave’s reflection time the structure of the subsurface can be inferred. Like an ultrasound scan. We call this seismic reflection or seismic imaging. A few years later, in 1925, John Karcher founded a research consortium with an oil company in order to continue to perfect his protocol. It delivered just three years later, when it made its first oil discovery. We still use seismic reflection today, but the method has come an incredibly long way since its early days: from blurred images, we now have very accurate 3D images. The progress made in seismic acquisition, signal processing and IT have turned seismic reflection into a very powerful tool! A tool for optimizing the production of oil fields but also to make drilling safer. This tool is now being adapted to prepare for the rise of renewable energies like offshore wind.

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

Semi-submersible platforms

The first semi-submersible platform revolutionized offshore oil exploration in the 1960s. Today, this technology forms the cornerstone of most of our offshore oil and gas projects. Our mastery of this technology and our long-standing expertise in offshore activities are also enabling us to expand into offshore wind energy, especially floating wind power.

John Abolarin, Oil Architect: We all know semi-submersible platforms, right? What about the first one?

John Abolarin: In the 1950s, Shell, the British oil company, thought it was time to go offshore. That’s how, in 1962, Bruce Collipp designed Blue Water 1, the world’s first semi-submersible platform! Imagine it. A kind of gigantic iceberg, most of its structure is underwater and held in place by four anchors. Shell created a well at a depth of 100 meters underwater. At that time this was a real achievement! This caused quite a stir in the industry. The British company however, had to share its technology with competitors, otherwise, the American authorities would refuse to grant them exploration licenses. Now we have semi-sub crane vessels, lifting over 10,000 tons of topsides and semi subs in 2,000 m of water depth carrying out drilling activities. We also use similar designs for our floating wind facilities as we continue our energy transition! And that’s why, semi-submersible technology is a real game changer for us and our industry.

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

The origins of the natural gas liquefaction process go back to the First World War: a story of helium and airships… More than a century later, TotalEnergies is the 3^rd largest LNG operator, underlining its role as a key fuel for the energy transition, natural gas can be liquefied to make it easier to store and sell worldwide.

Pierre Rullaud, LNG Architect: For the same mass, which substance will take up more space, a liquid or a gas? I’ll be right back with the answer, and more details about LNG, liquefied natural gas.

Pierre Rullaud: Liquefied natural gas… When liquefied, it is 600 times more compact than in its gaseous state. So as a liquid, it can be stored and transported far more easily, and that’s how LNG can now be traded across the world. But there’s a twist: that’s not at all what they were trying to do. During the First World War, the liquefaction process was designed to extract the helium present in natural gas to inflate military dirigible balloons. In 1941, a liquefaction plant was built in Cleveland, in the United States. The gas was liquefied to store it until the winter when it would be needed. Three years later, however, one of the tanks ruptured, causing an accident that discouraged any further LNG projects for some years. It was not until 1955 that development was relaunched by a small team. The gas was liquefied in the United States and then transported by LNG carrier to the United Kingdom for regasification. And, today, LNG is a pillar of TotalEnergies’ energy transition strategy.

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

Distillation

In our refineries, the distillation unit is used to separate crude oil molecules into large families of products for the manufacture of fuels and biofuels, raw materials for the plastics industry, bitumen and more. Let’s head over to 19^th-century America to discover the origins of this process.

Maud Nativel, GR5 Project Manager: How do you get from crude oil to a commercial product? I’m going to tell you straight away because it’s so fascinating!

Maud Nativel: It starts with an American, this is about oil, after all. He’s called Samuel Kier and he produces salt. But guess what, Samuel had problems with a black substance that was contaminating his wells. Then one day, he saw an oil slick catch fire, which piqued his interest. By heating the oil, Samuel Kier managed to produce the perfect fuel for lamps: kerosene. You have to remember that at the time, people used whale oil for lighting, but it was expensive and hard to find. So kerosene made an excellent alternative! Samuel Kier started selling it in 1851, and then built the first oil distillation unit in Pittsburgh in 1853. In our refineries today, the distillation unit separates the crude oil into major product families to produce fuel, feedstock for the plastics industry, bitumens and much else besides. And if you’re wondering, yes we are still going to need distillation to produce biofuels, for example.

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

Electricity in the city

It all began with the simple need for light; and today, electricity is at the heart of daily life for a large part of the planet. It is also a key component of TotalEnergies’ strategy. Our goal: to produce 100 TWh of electricity per year by 2030 to meet growing global demand.

Cécile Haag, Onshore Power Architect: And then there was light! I’ve got one minute to tell you about the beginnings of municipal electricity. Let’s start!

Cécile Haag: I’m talking about light because that was the first electric invention, with the electric light bulb. Thomas Edison invented this in 1879. Edison was American, so the first electrified city in the world was, drum roll… New York! In 1882, Edison built Pearl Street Station, the very first power plant, which generated electricity by burning coal. New York was followed by Paris, then London and Berlin… Electricity gradually replaced gas for street lighting at the end of the 19^th century, marking an industrial and social revolution! In France, light was brought into people’s homes in the form of the "lampe populaire", a single light bulb distributed to each household, which had to be turned off by 11:00 pm! And that is how, starting with light, the scientific curiosity of electricity became an essential part of our everyday life.

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

The Gedser wind turbine

From a simple 200-kilowatt wind turbine on a small island in Denmark to the multi-gigawatt wind farms developed by TotalEnergies, we’ve come a long way! Today, we aim to be among the world’s top five producers of renewable electricity (outside of China) by 2030, and wind power is at the heart of this energy revolution.

Karine Lafontaine, Project Manager - Offshore Support & Wind Projects: Wind, one of the four elements, an energy that man has learned to master. Here’s the story of the first wind turbine used to generate electricity.

Karine Lafontaine: The first modern, functional wind turbine was built in Gedser, a Danish village that sits on a small outcrop of the island of Falster. Well exposed to the wind! It was built by Johannes Juul in 1957. Juul was an engineer, and he tested several models during the Fifties, before finalizing this design. The Gedser wind turbine consists of a tower, a three-blade rotor and a security system to protect against strong winds. The innovative design marked a fundamental milestone in the development of our current wind turbines. It had power of 200 KW and operated from 1957 to 1967, displaying remarkable reliability throughout its lifetime! But let’s go back a little further and look a little wider. There is nothing new about harnessing the power of the wind: this basic idea has been deployed and reinvented over the centuries, to move boats, grind grain and generate electricity. And at TotalEnergies, too, these innovations go on: our specialists are working on new wind turbines that can produce at least 20 MW. That’s 100 times the Gedser installation!

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

Photovoltaic solar panels

Although the origins of photovoltaic solar panels date back to the 19th century, solar energy has only really taken off since the beginning of the 21^st century. By 2030, it is expected to account for over 15% of the world’s electricity production. With our large-scale solar projects, decentralized production and development of agrivoltaics, we are striving on all fronts to support the growth of this renewable energy.

Dounya Barrit, Photovoltaic reliability engineer: I love the notions of sunlight and power. Hum… I’m sure you understand where I want to go. Yes, photovoltaics ! Let’s dive in.

Dounya Barrit: Let's go back in time. 1839, the French scientist Edmond Becquerel discovered how to convert light into electricity, unveiling the photovoltaic effect. Kudos to him. Forty-four years later, in 1883, American inventor Charles Fritts created the first photovoltaic cell with an efficiency of 1%. Poor, but enough to drive research forward ! The first commercial silicon cell, with a 6% efficiency, was introduced to power the radio systems of the Vanguard 1 satellite. Photovoltaic cells were then mainly used in space applications before being employed in terrestrial and earthly applications in the 1970s. Now, let's fast forward. In the 2000s, crystalline silicon technology dominated the market, with a global solar panel production at around 300 MW and a cost of $4 per Watt. Today, photovoltaic energy production reaches 300 GW, a thousand times more than in the 2000s, and today, it is also much cheaper, at only 10 to 20 cents/Watt. Well, what about the future? By 2030, solar electricity production is expected to account for 15% of global electricity production. Quite impressive, right?

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

Lithium-ion batteries

Lithium-ion batteries have become an indispensable part of our daily lives, powering not only our electronic devices, but also cars, aircraft, industry and more. They are largely due to the combined work of three scientists from the UK, the USA and Japan.

Alimata Djire, R&D Engineer - Lithium Extraction: Don’t you know what lithium-ion batteries are? Sort of spelt like lion. Actually you do know what they are, and you use them a lot. Let me explain.

Alimata Djire: Lithium-ion batteries are light, with much higher energy density than batteries using lead or nickel, for example. They are rechargeable, and we use them to power electric devices, such as smartphones, laptops and drills. And they can be largely credited to the three laureates of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. A battery’s performance depends mainly on two components: the cathode and the anode. In the Seventies, Stanley Whittingham combined an anode of lithium, a very light, reactive material, with a titanium disulfide cathode. The result was a 2V non-rechargeable battery. But it tended to catch fire… oops! In 1980, John Goodenough proposed lithium cobalt oxide for the cathode, increasing the battery’s voltage to 4V. But the new battery was still unstable because of the lithium anode. Finally, Akira Yoshino combined a carbon anode with a lithium cobalt oxide cathode, to make a stable, rechargeable battery. And guess what, in 1991, Sony put the first lithium-ion batteries on the market, revolutionizing consumer electronics. It would still take years of improvements before they achieved the ubiquity of the 2010s, especially in electric cars. And thanks to industrialization and mass production, they now cost a tenth of the price of fifteen years ago!

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.

Detecting and measuring methane emissions

When released into the atmosphere, methane has a warming power 30 times greater than CO₂. That’s why we’re aiming to reduce our emissions of this greenhouse gas by 80% between 2020 and 2030. To achieve this, we can rely on the best emission detection and quantification technologies, such as AUSEA.

Nicolas Huet, AUSEA Project Manager: People talk about methane but do we really know about its properties and how we can track methane emissions in the atmosphere? I can explain all that in one minute!

Nicolas Huet: Let’s start with the basics: methane is the simplest hydrocarbon: at normal temperature and pressure it’s a gas that, when released into the atmosphere, has a warming potential which is 30 times more than carbon dioxide. That’s why TotalEnergies aims to reduce those emissions by 80% between 2020 and 2030. The first technology we can use is satellites. Satellites can identify “superemitters”: industrial and agricultural sites that emit over 100 kg of methane per hour. We work with GHGSat, a Canadian company with twelve satellites orbiting the Earth. If we zoom in a bit, we see that methane detection is not new for our sites. It’s actually a safety pillar for our operators. But to get to zero , you need to be more precise, so the Company has invested in new tools. First, infrared cameras, used in refining and now also in Exploration & Production. Then, fixed sensors were introduced in Texas and Italy for continuous surveillance. These sensors are now being deployed across all our operated sites. In addition to detection, TotalEnergies has started quantifying its methane emissions, using its AUSEA technology: a drone-mounted gas analyzer, developed in partnership with the University of Reims and the CNRS research center. After two years of testing the prototypes, OneTech launched the industrialization phase, in two parts: the gas analyzer and cloud data processing.

Thank you for listening to Stories of Innovation. Visit totalenergies.com to discover the origins of other innovations.