With digitalization and an evolution in mobility, as well as increased access to electricity among populations, the 21st century is truly a century of electricity. The demand for electricity is increasing faster than the global demand in energy. While our group has placed climate at the heart of its strategy, we want to offer our clients a mix of increasingly low-carbon energy sources. Keeping true to our integrated model, we aim to produce and supply electricity that is produced first and foremost from renewable energies, and from natural gas, which is the fossil fuel with the lowest level of CO2 emissions.
From the production to the supply of electricity from renewables
Total has a long history in the power business: electricity has always been one of the main outputs from our natural gas production. Gas, which emits much less carbon than coal to produce electricity, is ideal to compensate for the intermittent nature of renewables, i.e. to take over when there is no sun, wind, etc. In order to offer our individual and business customers the best-priced deals, we are present throughout the electricity value chain.
- Production: in the past few years, we have significantly increased our production capacity, especially through targeted acquisitions in the renewable energies sector (solar, wind or hydraulic) - where our business is growing at a fast pace - and the creation of dedicated subsidiaries.Our goal is to have a renewable power generation capacity of 25 GW by 2025.
- Supply: we are a major electricity supplier in Europe through our subsidiaries Total Direct Energie and Lampiris.
- Storage: to compensate for the intermittent nature of renewable energies and limit access costs to the network for our clients, the storage of electricity is one of our priorities. We work in the area of electricity storage through our subsidiary Saft and invest in this essential link in the renewable energy chain.
And because we are determined to pursue the decarbonization of our energies, we also have the ambition to grow in the biogas and hydrogen sectors.
Solutions to promote electric mobility
The transport sector is currently undergoing big changes. Faced with climatic challenges and the evolution of usage, electric mobility seems like an ideal solution. It involves light vehicles – the number of electric vehicles could reach 380 million worldwide by 2040, compared to 2 million today – as well as fleets of company vehicles.
Because we are aware of these challenges, we are offering our clients a range of products and services:
- within service stations we have developed a dense network of electric recharge points (1,000 recharge points every 150 kilometers (93.2 miles) in Western Europe);
- outside of the network of service stations: we are forming partnerships to put in place public recharge points throughout Europe;
- at home: our subsidiaries that provide electricity also offer recharge services to consumers;
- in the area of storage our subsidiary Saft has linked with Solvay, Manz and Siemens to launch an ambitious R&D program to develop the battery of the future. This program opens the way to a new generation of lithium-ion batteries (Li-ion). It targets all market sectors: electromobility (electric cars and buses, the rail and maritime sectors as well as aeronautics), energy storage (SSE) and specialized industries.
