A engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate from the École Poly­tech­nique appoint­ed to the Corps des Mines, Stéphane Dupré la Tour is the Direc­tor for Advanced Inno­va­tion and Dig­i­tal Tech­nolo­gies at EDF. He is the God­fa­ther of the 2025 grad­u­a­tion class.

After com­plet­ing his engi­neer­ing stud­ies, Stéphane Dupré la Tour was assigned to the Lille region­al pre­fec­ture as a civ­il ser­vant. What were his duties? “At the time, numer­ous indus­tri­al sec­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly steel, tex­tiles and min­ing, were under­go­ing restruc­tur­ing or even dis­ap­pear­ing in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, as the region was then known. The job involved man­ag­ing indus­tri­al con­ver­sion projects and eco­nom­ic aid”, he says.

After this ini­tial expe­ri­ence, he joined the decen­tralised Gov­ern­ment ser­vices for the Envi­ron­ment. “Region­al con­ver­sion had to do with com­ply­ing with reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing soil, air and water pol­lu­tion, among oth­er things. We there­fore imple­ment­ed the first region­al plan for indus­tri­al waste man­age­ment and air qual­i­ty’”, he explains.

One sit­u­a­tion, in par­tic­u­lar, made a last­ing impres­sion on him: see­ing chil­dren liv­ing near a for­mer steel­works with con­cen­tra­tions of met­als in their blood so high that they suf­fered from severe cog­ni­tive dis­or­ders. This is what made him aware of the links between the envi­ron­ment and health. Faced with the real­i­ty of the ‘North’, Stéphane Dupré la Tour has always tried to find solu­tions to improve the envi­ron­ment with­out lead­ing local indus­tries to close down.

After a short peri­od at the Min­istry for Indus­try, he joined the cab­i­net of Jacques Chirac in year 2000, then Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic, as an advi­sor on eco­log­i­cal issues “It was when I took up the post that I realised the scope was much broad­er, as it includ­ed, among oth­er things, trans­port, indus­try and crafts, inno­va­tion, land use plan­ning, etc. In short, any­thing that could have an eco­log­i­cal impact,’ explains Stéphane Dupré la Tour.

Dur­ing the 2002 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, can­di­date Jacques Chirac — who showed a gen­uine inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues — made a flag­ship pro­pos­al: an Envi­ron­men­tal Char­ter. When Jacques Chirac was re-elect­ed, Stéphane con­tin­ued to serve in his cab­i­net, set to work and the Envi­ron­men­tal Char­ter, a text with full con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ue, like the 1789 Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man and of the Cit­i­zen, was pro­mul­gat­ed in 2005. It includes the right of every­one to live in an envi­ron­ment that does not harm their health.

“Through­out the five-year term, we start­ed with the envi­ron­men­tal facts and rolled out a com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, includ­ing a nation­al health and envi­ron­ment plan. My lessons from the “North” had borne fruit”, he explains.

“In a com­plex and some­times anx­i­ety-pro­vok­ing world, it is essen­tial not to give up. Each gen­er­a­tion faces major chal­lenges and must put all its ener­gy into meet­ing the chal­lenges of its time. At the UTC Open Days, I realised that the UTC’s edu­ca­tion­al project — which ful­ly incor­po­rates human­i­ties, can equip its stu­dents to do just that,” con­cludes Stéphane Dupré la Tour.

MSD