Patrick Pouyanné: Who is TotalEnergies’ Chairman and CEO?
A company that has been overall steadily well-performing over the last decade, TotalEnergies, making significant investments across the energy industry, including exploration and production, refining and chemicals and renewable energy. As well as this, TotalEnergies has strengthened its position as one of the world’s largest integrated oil and gas companies by diversifying its portfolio, acquiring and strengthening partnerships to underpin this.
This has all happened under the leadership of Chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné.
In the top job since 2015, Pouyanné’s career at TotalEnergies spans back to 1997, with the French engineer having dedicated the majority of his career to the betterment of the company, regarded as one of the world’s top seven in supermajor oil.
Originally from the Seine-Maritime region of France, Pouyanné studied Engineering at École Polytechnique where he graduated with an engineering degree before becoming an engineer of the Corps des mines. He joined TotalEnergies after working briefly for the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Information Technology and Space. In the more than quarter century since, he has held a variety of senior roles, rising through from Chief Administrative Officer Total E&P Angola and CEO Total E&P Qatar before taking a series of executive positions in his native France.
It was here that Pouyanné became SVP of Exploration and Production, President of Refining and Chemicals and then finally, was announced as Chairman and CEO in October 2014, taking on the role full-time at the start of the following year.
Outside of TotalEnergies, Pouyanné is Chairman of the French association, Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE) and Chairman of the Alliance pour l’Education - United Way. He is also a Member of the Board of Directors of Capgemini, of his alma mater École Polytechnique and of the Institut Polytechnique of Paris. As well as this, he also works closel with the Association Française des Entreprises Privées (known in English as the French Association of Private Companies), the Institut du Monde Arabe and the Foundation La France s’engage.
TotalEnergies: Investing in the future
Taking to LinkedIn to share some of the companies’ latest results, Pouyanné said that its 2023 outcomes “aligned with our stated objectives”.
He continued: “These results, which come at a moment of macro economics uncertainty and geopolitical instability, confirm the relevance of our balanced energy transition strategy and the commitment of our teams that is enabling us to address today's growing global demand, while simultaneously building the decarbonised energy system of tomorrow.”
In 2023, the energy giant invested more than US$16 billion to improve its operations, in excess of a third of which is solely dedicated to low carbon energies with a primary focus on electricity and renewables. This echoes its public support of tripling renewable capacity worldwide by 2030 and aiming for zero methane emissions, as laid out at COP28 in Dubai.
“The strength of our results is a matter of pride for us, as it enables TotalEnergies to mobilise the resources necessary to fulfil our ambitions, and to concretely implement our roadmap,” Pouyanné concluded.
At COP28, TotalEnergies declared that renewables are the way to phase out fossil fuels, backing the international pledge to triple renewable energy generation.
“Decarbonisation is all about electricity and electrification,” Pouyanné told Reuters during the summit, despite oil and gas making up the biggest part of its profits.
The company has committed to growing the renewables arm of the business to 100GW of gross installed capacity by the end of the decade. Capacity now sits at 22GW, with TotalEnergies having to increase said capacity by around five times to meet the goal by 2030.
Favouring sources such as solar and wind, he added: “The supply chain, if there is the demand, will come. It's not so complex to build a manufacturing plant for solar cells.”
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