Putting chemistry at the service of the energy transition

On the occasion of International Women's  Day, we will be publishing a series of portraits of ENGIE employees, each of whom, in their own way, are trying to change the world for the better. Researchers, assistants or engineers, they agreed to answer our questions and tell us about themselves, their journey and their everyday contributions for a more resilient, greener or fairer world.

We thank them for entrusting us with their stories!

At just 24 years old, Gaëlle is the youngest of our selection! After studying chemistry, she left her native Brittany to join the ranks of ENGIE Lab CRIGEN, the corporate research center of ENGIE.

Gaëlle, tell us about your work at CRIGEN

ENGIE is my first employer, since I joined CRIGEN last year as a research engineer.
There are several Labs at CRIGEN, on a wide variety of themes covering all the research and innovation topics of interest to the Group. For my part, I work within the Liquefaction Lab on the theme of green gases, one of ENGIE's core businesses, and in particular on biogas.
In this team, we are not interested in the production of biogas but rather in what is done with it afterwards, be it purification and cryogenic processes for liquefaction or storage and transport. In environmental discussions we often compare fossil fuels and renewable energies.  In between these  two it is sometimes difficult to position  green gases. I know that biogas is an energy that is sometimes debated, especially when it comes from dedicated crops.
But what interests me in this area is how biogas fits into the circular economy. Of course, it comes from organic matter, but these materials can be waste, which is difficult to recover properly otherwise. You can kill several birds with one stone, manage your waste and produce gas. It seems important to me to take these two aspects into account.

So it was voluntarily that you chose this sector?

The starting point is my interest in science. Then, chemistry is an extremely vast field with very many applications, some less virtuous than others.
I am therefore very happy to be able to combine the ecological transition and my affinity for chemistry and to put one at the service of the other.

How do you act for a better world?

First by my job itself! This is an area that I have chosen, which interests me. It is also a subject where it is easy to quantify or visualize your impact. We work every day to develop concrete technologies that will improve the world we know.
This action is the easiest  to define! In my personal life, my actions are on a smaller scale, but even though I’m not an activist, I try to think about the impact of my actions, to always question my ways of consuming or moving around.
We are in a fairly privileged situation, we have access to many things, but that does not mean that we must necessarily use all these possibilities. Sometimes we do things mechanically, out of habit, but if we question ourselves to see further, we realize that we could do better. 
Concretely, for a long time I ate a lot of meat, and travelled by plane without asking myself too many questions because it seemed normal and classic to me to act like this. Now that I understand a little better the huge impact that these behaviors can have, I try to limit my consumption and find alternatives for my journeys. And there are still probably several topics that I don't even think about today, but which could be done in a  more responsible way!

Do you have a message for women, at ENGIE or elsewhere?

Whether in my professional or personal life, I do not have the impression of having encountered more "external" obstacles due to the fact that I was a woman, nor of having to fight more than men to get the same thing. 
On the other hand, I have observed that the girls around me, including me, tend to put up barriers for themselves more often. We dare less, we are more easily afraid of not succeeding. I don't know where it comes from but there is nothing founded in all this, women shouldn't censor themselves and should strive for confidence in themselves, just as men do.