3 questions to Nouha Gazbour: sustainable development serving the european photovoltaic industry

My name is Nouha Gazbour and I am Manager of Strategic and Environmental Marketing within the Solar Technologies Department at CEA-Liten, serving the ITE INES.2S programs.

My role is to provide expertise and methodologies in the field of sustainable development. I analyze the photovoltaic market, its technologies and the sector's regulations from a technical and economic perspective.

I coordinate these topics within our laboratories in order to integrate eco-design approaches into our research activities as closely as possible to the field.

I also work with our supervisory ministries, as a trusted third party, to support their reflections and work on energy transition and sovereignty, always in relation to photovoltaics, of course.

My work is exciting and very meaningful to me. The results have a tangible impact on the world around me, on various scales. What happens in the world also impacts on my work.

For example, I am participating in Task XII, which deals with the sustainable development of photovoltaics at the International Energy Agency, alongside a panel of international experts. The aim is to establish the references that will be used for the environmental assessment of solar photovoltaic technologies around the world. Very often, these references are then used to establish national policies and industrial roadmaps.

I am originally from Tunisia and came to France in 2015 to do my final engineering internship (editor's note: top of her class). Right after that, I was hired by the CEA at INES to do a thesis on the systemic integration of eco-design within a research organization. It was a new topic for our Institute at the time, way before these practices were adopted in the photovoltaic industry.

At the end of my thesis, I implemented at the CEA a methodology dedicated to solar energy, but which could be applied to all areas of energy and beyond. And I stayed! This topic quickly gained importance around the world, and at CEA-Liten we were prepared to implement a comprehensive approach. I was in the right place at the right time.

Over the last few years, we have succeeded in developing a very in-depth approach to issues related to the eco-design of photovoltaics. This means that we now have access to highly advanced and comprehensive expertise, databases and analysis tools. With all this at our disposal, we are able to take a preventive approach, starting with research, to avoid negative impacts for the environment or to minimize their effects.

In our laboratories, we can prioritize research on topics that will have a major impact on reducing our environmental footprint or dependence on critical materials. This also means anticipating and facilitating the end-of-life management of photovoltaic panels.

Finally, it is key to supporting the industry together with the eco-organization SOREN, the French entity responsible for collecting and processing end-of-life photovoltaic solar panels. Together, we have defined the eco-modulation criteria implemented under the French AGEC law since January 2025, and then designed and developed a tool for assessing the recyclability of solar panels, which we expect to be online soon.