The hub “ENergy SUstainable Independent Territories” was officially launched on October 6, 2021 at the Institute of Analytical Sciences and Physical Chemistry for the Environment and Materials (IPREM), a joint CNRS/UPPA research unit located in Pau.

It is a research collaboration between “hard” and social sciences, started at the beginning of the year and for 5 years. Or how to bring together chemists, mathematicians, lawyers, geographers, sociologists and economists to work together on the energy independence of a territory. The idea is that artificial photosynthesis will perhaps one day allow each inhabitant to store and redistribute around him/her the energy he/she will have produced in the form of green hydrogen.

As Isabelle Baraille, UPPA’s vice-president in charge of research, reminded us at the opening of the conference, hubs are the flagship projects of the E2S UPPA I-SITE. Coordinated by chemist Laurent Billon and lawyer Louis de Fontenelle, the EnSuITe hub brings together no less than three UPPA research laboratories (IPREM, LMAP, TREE) and a joint service unit (DMEX), as well as four foreign universities (Canada, Spain, Germany).

Tarik Chekchak, director of the biomimicry pole of the Institut des Futurs Souhaitables, then explained how to draw inspiration from the living world to support territorial transitions. Other speakers included Christophe Krolik (professor of natural resources and energy law at Laval University in Canada) and Frédéric Chandezon (CEA Grenoble, vice-coordinator of the SUNERGY Initiative).

*Science, Innovation, Territories, Economy Initiative by the French government