Innovating together to bring about energy transition

To bring its innovation projects to fruition, Teréga draws on more than 40 partners with a varied range of complementary skills. Their profiles are diverse: universities, start-ups, industries, actors in the energy sector, scientific experts and so on. We select partners who share our vision for the future of energy, and with whom we will be able to bring our daring projects to fruition.

Our partnership strategy has three aims:

• to increase the skills of in-house teams in key technical fields, with public and private research organisations such as the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour (UPPA) or the Toulouse National Institute of Applied Science (INSA);
  

• to work together over the long term working with other actors in the energy sector (GRTgaz, Storengy, SNAM etc.) on similar issues: joint project development, sharing advances and findings etc.
  

• to support the development of innovative technologies or methodologies which will create value for Teréga: partnerships with research organisations, SMEs and start-ups.

Teréga also draws on its involvement in different research organisations and associations, both within France and internationally: GERG (European Gas Research Group), EPRG (European Pipeline Research Group), ITTECOP (Land Transport Infrastructures, Ecosystems and Countryside), etc.

To sustain our drive for innovation and to increase the diversity of our partnerships, we have been committed for a number of years now to various Open Innovation initiatives alongside organisations such as CITEPH (Cooperation for Technological Innovation in the field of energy), the Avenia competitive cluster and the Ecole Supérieure des Technologies Industrielles Avancées (ESTIA).

This approach enables us to involve our customers, suppliers and future partners more fully in the joint search for new solutions to bring about the energy transition and digital transformation currently in progress. The promising results have convinced us we should position ourselves as challenges initiators and launch TENEXI.

To take its collaboration further, Teréga has embraced the concept of taking advantage of collective intelligence, launching its own Open Innovation process: TENEXI (from the French expression Tous ENsemble Explorons l’Innovation - let’s all explore innovation together). By calling for projects on key themes within our activities and involving a wide external ecosystem, we hope to:

• tackle challenges within our own area of activities;

• secure the adaptation of new solutions to our activities;

• support the development of innovative companies.  

For the first round, launched in May 2020, the stress was on personal safety, linked to our PARI 2025 safety programme. A challenge was launched to find novel solutions to avoid accidents associated with the simultaneous working of people and heavy machinery on worksites.

Beyond Open Innovation, TENEXI is also intended to encourage the emergence of innovative solutions within the organisation. Ideation challenges for employees were also launched in June 2020. This process enables each person to become a player in the evolution of the company, and to see the germination of ideas to deal with the challenges encountered internally.