Link research topics to international and national sustainable development goals, especially energy transition

Centrale Nantes' research institutes are involved in projects relating to renewable energies, decarbonisation of transport, low-carbon materials and structures, and healthcare. The research department also continues to support research promoting sustainable development by co-funding master's and PhD theses and granting research leave for changes of topic.

 

Objectives

• Evaluate the contribution of research activities to sustainable development objectives.
• Support changes in research topics.
• Develop research topics related to low-carbon technologies.

Key indicators and actions

• More than 50% of research activity is related to sustainable development issues.
• One-third of theses focus on sustainable development.
• Laboratory of Excellence (Labex) NExT Project: ORACLE (Offshore Renewable Energy Research Centre of Excellence)
• Establishment of the OPEN-C Foundation, Europe's largest offshore test centre for Marine Renewable Energy
• The SCI-TY programme is one of the projects selected in the French National Research Agency (ANR)'s "Pre-maturity - Maturity" call for projects
• Centrale Nantes and EDYCEM: reducing the environmental footprint in concrete design.
• NExT inter-cluster symposium ‘Decarbonisation OF and BY research’ > link in French
• Signature of the FORTEIM project agreement for the energy transition of the marine industries sector.
• Marine Renewable Energy hackathon organised by WEAMEC, in partnership with the Institut Universitaire Mer & Littoral. > link in French

A selection of initiatives at Centrale Nantes

The implementation of the Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility action plan and the resources mobilised through calls for projects have led to the emergence of multidisciplinary research in the research laboratories:  

• Research Laboratory in Hydrodynamics, Energetics & Atmospheric Environment (LHEEA): CARGO cluster on the decarbonisation of maritime transport and the ORACLE LabEx (Offshore Renewable Energy Research Centre of Excellence) on issues related to offshore renewable energy
• Research Institute in Civil and Mechanical Engineering (GeM): PhD thesis entitled ‘Defining operational low-carbon trajectories for companies according to size and sector, in line with national and global climate issues and the Sustainable Development Goals’, defended in 2023, in partnership with Toovalu
• Laboratory of Digital Sciences of Nantes (LS2N): launch in 2023 of the ANR I-DAVE project - Data-knowledge integration for the reliability of LCA studies in the Enterprise of the Future
• Architectural and Urban Ambiances Laboratory (AAU): research on architecture and cities, integrating different scientific disciplines.

The SCI-TY programme selected in the French National Research Agency (ANR)'s "Pre-maturity - Maturity" call for projects

As part of the France 2030 programme with the goal of carbon neutrality. The SCI-TY programme focuses on two major national acceleration strategies:

• Sustainable cities and innovative buildings;
• Digitalisation and decarbonisation of mobility.

The programme is divided into four major French regions: Île-de-France and Northern France, Nantes, Lyon and the Mediterranean. For the Nantes region, the members involved include the Nantes campus of Gustave Eiffel University, Nantes University, SATT Ouest Valorisation and Centrale Nantes.

Centrale Nantes - EDYCEM Chair

The collaboration between EDYCEM and Centrale Nantes began more than twenty years ago, driven by a desire to work on research projects focusing on cementitious materials, particularly self-compacting concrete and concrete with low environmental impact. The work of the third Chair (2024-208) focuses on three main themes, in line with the strategic areas on which Centrale Nantes is working:

• Reducing the environmental footprint in concrete design
• Contributions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to new-generation concretes
• Contribution to the challenges of the city of tomorrow