An ENSTA team wins the Energy4Climate 2026 Challenge

Training, Innovation, Student Life Sustainable Energy
Benoit Grandon of the SustainENSTA team receiving first prize in the E4C 2026 Challenge from Philippe Drobinski, director of the Center

How can we best promote renewable energy production in France? That was the question posed by the 6th edition of the Energy4Climate – Agorize Challenge, to which a team of ENSTA students provided an answer that was both innovative and well-reasoned.

Every year, due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources, a portion of the renewable energy produced in France fails to reach its market. The question posed by the Energy4Climate Interdisciplinary Center at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris for student teams to explore was therefore justified by an issue that is crucial to the development of these carbon-free energy sources.

 

Highly aware of issues related to the fight against climate change, Matthew Herr, who is currently pursuing the PIC (Project-Innovation-Concept) master’s program at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris as part of his third year in the general engineering program at ENSTA, decided to take on the challenge by assembling a team composed entirely of ENSTA students.

Each student had the opportunity to showcase the skills and experience they gained during gap-year internships or through their dual-degree programs abroad: power plants for Camille Chanut, storage-related issues for Mathilde Roger Estrade, power grid interconnections for Benoit Grandon, and the energy market for Matthew Herr.

The SustainENSTA team. From left to right and top to bottom: Mathilde Roger Estrade, Camille Chanut, Benoit Grandon, and Matthew Herr.

“The general engineering program at ENSTA gave us the perfect toolkit and the big-picture perspective needed to tackle these kinds of issues. All four of us took the elective course on sustainable energy in our second year, which proved to be crucial in helping us gain a deep understanding of the renewable energy ecosystem and technologies.”

Matthew Herr

The SustainENSTA team’s proposal centered on the key idea of boosting exports to neighboring countries by capitalizing on a fundamental trend: the inevitable rise in consumption driven by the gradual electrification of various uses, combined with a decline in local production.

The jury praised the realism and thoroughness of the proposal and awarded the SustainENSTA team first prize.
 

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