Why Good Science Isn’t Enough: From Aviation Fuel to Beauty, Cost Gaps in Climate Innovation with Olivier Rolland

Olivier Rolland
You know, it was quite frustrating that you have a technology success, you have the regulatory success, but at the end of the day we can’t make it. But there is a third one, we never talk about this one, which is the economic sustainability. There is no way biotech can be competitive at such a low cost, without any regulatory incentive.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Every few years a new sustainable technology arrives that seems to have everything going for it. The science works, the regulators approve it, the industry wants it. And then nothing happens. My guest today is Olivier Rolland, Global Director of Strategic Initiatives at L’Oreal Research and Innovation, where he works on reducing the environmental impact of one of the world’s largest beauty companies. From the fields where ingredients are grown to what happens after a product goes down the drain. Before L’Oreal, Olivier spent two decades working on the challenge of turning promising science into real world change. And across all those experiences he learned one thing. A sustainability innovation doesn’t succeed on science alone. I’m Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi and this is Climate Forward. Olivier Rolland, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today. Welcome. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Olivier, you worked on fuels for aircrafts and now face cream. At some point someone must have asked you what exactly do you do?

Olivier Rolland
I am leading what we call the strategic initiatives in order to propose to the group some options, some scenarios, some guidelines in order for the group to reduce its environmental impact on the upstream part of our value chain, from the extraction of natural resources to the raw material that we buy and formulate, and the downstream side of the value chain, the use phase and the end of life of our products. Being in research and innovation, I’m refocusing on raw materials, ingredients and formula.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And when we translate this to what you do in general, how does this come in, right? You have a career that spans many different industries with quite a strong pivot here with the switch to L’Oreal. What is it that you do when you look at your career? How would you describe this?

Olivier Rolland
I think at the end of the day it’s about how do I help innovative technology materializing into value-add business that have a sustainability impact.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Okay, now that sounds good and interesting. Let’s start at the beginning. What is your background and what did you study?

Olivier Rolland
I’m a chemist by training. I did a PhD in organic chemistry with a chemical company called Rhodia. Rhodia has been absorbed by Solvay, a Belgium chemical company. And after that I did some executive training in leadership management businesses.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And where did you start your career? The first stop I know from reading a little bit about your biography was at Michelin. Was it your first role or your first serious role?

Olivier Rolland
That is correct. After my PhD I joined Michelin Research Centre in Clermont-Ferrand in the centre of France. And I was a junior scientist over there. I had three main missions. One mission was about developing new elastomers for earth mover tires, for competition tires. The second mission was about how we could deploy high-throughput screening technology within the chemistry labs. And high-throughput screening technology in the chemistry lab. And finally, this was a time where synthetic biology was emerging as a potentially a real revolutionary field. And so we were looking at the opportunity to leverage this and biotech in order to diversify and secure the raw materials Michelin was using in its synthetic elastomer plant.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And what does this mean for a consumer? This all sounds very refined, but what does it actually mean on a Tuesday?

Olivier Rolland
For a consumer it’s basically how we can switch the fossil-based content of a tire into a bio-based content. But it’s not just about sustainability from an other perspective, it’s also about the resilience of the supply chain. It’s also a procurement play, a securisation play.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
So on the supply chain also you mean? Yeah, that is correct. And when you say bio-based inputs, what would that be for example?

Olivier Rolland
For instance, basically, let’s take biotechnology. Today, most of the biotechnology products like ethanol, like amino acids, they are produced by the fermentation of sugars. Sugars coming either from corn in the US, from cane in Brazil, into those molecules. So it was about how can we transform sugar into other type of molecules that we could incorporate in tires.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Okay, so we will see a red thread starting here if we move to the next step in your career. Did it work?

Olivier Rolland
It was an opportunity study, so it was really early on at the beginning. And it actually in a way it worked because we went through a gate and it started some biotech activities within Michelin.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And will this be something, or do you by any chance know if the company is still pursuing this? Because I understand that all rubber tires are now synthetic rubber, right?

Olivier Rolland
No, no, no, that’s not true. Parts of tires are coming from natural rubber that are extracted from rubber trees. And the other parts of tires are coming from synthetic rubber. Also they are a blend. Yeah, it’s a blend. And so, and to your question whether, you know, Michelin continue to work on that, yes, they did. And actually, there is a project out there called the Butterfly Project where they are producing butadiene from ethanol actually.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And from biobasism. And b sugar as an ingredient, there’s limited supply. Is that, would that be available on the scale necessary to really replace a part of the fossil-based supply chain?

Olivier Rolland
I think, you know, if we think order of magnitude wise, today, 80 million tons a year of ethanol are produced from sugar. 50% is coming from corn in the US and 25% coming from cane in Brazil. So, you know, these are big numbers. And so it has been a long time since we have been using sugar for food for sure, but also for other applications like fuels and chemicals.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Yeah, and I think maybe you have more insight into this because that’s something that is often overlooked when we talk about replacing the fossil feedstock in chemistry. It’s only a fraction of the fossil fuel that we extract from the ground that’s going into chemistry, right? The larger part is literally just going into fuels for cars and combustion engines. Is that right?

Olivier Rolland
So one way you can, I guess you can think about that is when you extract oil and you refine oil, you have different cuts. And those cuts, basically, they will feed into, I would say, plastic materials, polymers. They will feed into gasoline, kerosene for aircraft, diesel. And at the end of the day, they will feed into lubricants, right? Then the question is, how do we switch to biofuels? And when it comes to biofuels, I think there are a couple of considerations we need to take into account. One is, so fuel is basically an oil. And when you look at biodiesel, biodiesel is produced from vegetable oil. It’s produced from rapeseed. It is produced from palm, for instance. And for gasoline, here we’re talking about ethanol. And this is produced, I was saying, from corn and from cane. Then the question is, okay, are we going to be able to replace all the fuels, fossil-based fuel, biofuels? And I think we need to think a little bit differently about that, meaning that we are seeing electrification of passenger cars. And so what this means is actually that we might not need gasoline and ethanol that much for this market. And then when it comes to biodiesel, there are some alternative ways to propulse vehicles. So at the end of the day, what we remain in terms of the necessity for high energy density liquid is for aircraft. It’s basically to replace kerosene.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
This is a fantastic arc to your next career stop, which was at Total Amyris. This is an interesting combination. It’s an oil major with a biotech, biochemistry startup. And the goal there was what? Maybe you can explain your own words.

Olivier Rolland
Well, this was a time where Total decided to launch what was called a new energy business unit. There were three major focuses. One was solar energy. The second one was nuclear energy. But this was stopped after Fukushima catastrophic. And then was biotech. And the idea here was to be able to develop bio-based products that could substitute parts of existing products. So biofuels, bio-lubricants, biomaterials, for instance.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And I have to ask, so you were working on bio-based dropper for tires. And then the next day, you thought it’s time to make fuel from sugar?

Olivier Rolland
Well, actually, that’s an interesting story. What happened is when I did this opportunity study with Michelin about the use of biotechnology for tires, I realized at that time, you know, we are back in the 2000s, that all the innovation and most of the activities was in the U.S. And it was actually backed by venture capitalists who had a lot of success in digitalization. And so they saw synthetic biology as kind of the next wave, the next revolution that will change the paradigm for fuel and for the environment. And so I realized that actually, this is where I could really get a great impact.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
So you were actively searching for work, and I really make a difference in the world.

Olivier Rolland
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I didn’t, it’s not like I went there with this angle. I think I went there from, as I was saying, you know, it was more a securitization, a procurement play. And actually, I realized that there was a real sustainability play there.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Yeah. And then maybe let’s dive a little bit into this joint venture, because I think it’s really interesting, and there was a really important first in the world. Please tell us a little bit, what did you work on?

Olivier Rolland
So, you know, when you’re trying to develop substitute to fossil-based compound, like fuels, like lubricants, like polymers, what you need at the end of the day, you need carbon. Basically carbon and nitrogen. And when you look at nature and all the molecules that nature produces, there are three major families that are highly concentrated in carbon and hydrogen. One family already discovered that it’s oil, vegetable oil, it’s a lot of carbon and hydrogen. Another one is what we call polyketides, which is really what was an emerging field. It’s more of kind of pharma application. And then the last one is terp, those are called terpenes. And terpenes basically are the family of molecules where you find, guess what, natural rubber. And so actually the objective of Total with Amiris was to leverage Amyris platform to produce terpenes in order to engineer microorganisms to drive the flow of carbon and energy towards hydrocarbons that we could use in aviation fuel for, aviation fuel. So basically what we call today, soft sustainable aviation fuel. And so we had a whole research development program in this respect.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And when you say microorganisms, talking about enzymes, bacteria.

Olivier Rolland
We are talking about in this instance, lists, but you know it could be also bacteria.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Okay. And then the step was we take again sugar.

Olivier Rolland
Correct. Basically what you do is you are engineering the genome of lists in order to transform sugar into hydrocarbons with sufficiently high yield and other performances so that it can be cost variable at the end of the day.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And were there some frictions to technology? What were the big challenges?

Olivier Rolland
Well, the big challenges was actually by design was a market we were targeting. So let me give you just some order of magnitude. When the barrier of oil is at $100, the price of fossil kerosene is $1 a liter, more or less. And so what it means is that if you want to be able to substitute kerosene by sustainable aviation fuel without any regulatory incentive, you basically need to be on par from a cost perspective. And in order to reach this type of cost, you need to really perform to the maximum of what nature can do. And that was the major challenges. How can you engineer the microorganism to the most performing status? And at the same time, how can you develop the most efficient process so that you can basically deliver hydrocarbons with minimal costs?

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
We’re going to come back to this cost gap because this is something that I think we still see today and it’s on a dramatic scale even still, depending on which type of stuff we’re discussing. But I think it’s a good bridge to another step you made because you were there. Apparently, the technology worked out.

Olivier Rolland
Technology worked out. It was a technology success, a huge success. It was a regulatory success because, as we say in the aviation industry, there is no parking in the air. So you need to make sure that any new technology that you enter into an aircraft is completely safe. It’s performing as the incumbent. But it was not a commercial success. And the reason why is because when we reach the market, the barrel of oil dropped from $100 to $50. Remember that was a 2014, 2015 time and it lasts for a long time at this level. And there is no way biotech can be competitive at such a low cost without any regulatory incentive. And at that time, also, you can remember that there was no regulation.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
I remember this was just talking about the fuel plant mandates in Europe that was beginning, I think, in 2006, 2008, something around that time.

Olivier Rolland
But it’s only in the recent years that we have now a real regulation.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
For SAF, this is only since two years. Yeah, absolutely. And we will get to that because I think I want to understand why did you make the step away from the joint venture? What was your thinking there? Why did you make this next step?

Olivier Rolland
Well, the thing is, you know, it was quite frustrating that you have a technology success, you have the regulatory success, but at the end of the day, we can’t make it and we can’t have an impact. And that was a time where the Boeing company, they built this new division called Boeing Global Services to engineer services around the cell of an aircraft. And so when you think about that, maybe we could engineer some innovative business model in order to solve for the economic equation of sustainable aviation fuels. And so when I joined Boeing, the idea was, you know, in specific parts of the world where we have some activities, how can we try to solve kind of a strategic stake of the country while developing sustainable aviation fuel? So maybe let me give you an example. Yeah, in living layman terms. Take the Middle East as a region at that time, the major stake by far was food independence or autonomy. The reason why is because I think they were importing nearly 80 percent of what they consume. And so, you know, we partnered with different stakeholders like Etihad, the airline company, Takreer, the petrochemical company over there, the Masdar Institute, the academics over there. In order to build a new model based on water. So we were taking water from the sea and we were growing fish and shrimp. So these basically address the major stakes, right? And the water then is enriched in nutrients. So you think about it as a water cycle. Then we could actually use this water to grow specific plants in deserts. And then we could actually read the waters through a purification with mongrove, which is an endogenous species over there. We built a pilot facility and we, you know, the economic model showed that it was already okay from the aquaculture piece. So the big question was, okay, are we going to be able to find some investors who will be willing to decrease their return investment in order in a way for us to subsidize the transformation of biomass into sustainable aviation fuel. So that was a type of project we were looking to, you know, being innovative in the business model. From Boeing side. Yeah.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
This is not the first thought I would have when I think about Boeing.

Olivier Rolland
Yeah. And we had, you know, we had kind of similar project from a mine-time perspective, you know, in China, in North America, in Brazil as well.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
I mean, this is really interesting, but in principle, we’re touching back to the same principle, right? You’re starting, I mean, the aquaculture is a means to an end, which maybe covers some part of the cost. At the end, you end up with biomass, which again is your carbon source, I would assume, and then paired with what you need still hydrogen somewhere.

Olivier Rolland
Well, you already have what you need in the biomass here because you can have some specific, you know, halophytes in these instances that contains oil and you can extract the oil and use it as a fuel.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
So this is a much simpler process.

Olivier Rolland
Well, it’s one of the most simple processes to produce sustainable aviation fuel.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And again, did that work? Because I’m not seeing, at least to my knowledge, there’s not a scale production with this technology.

Olivier Rolland
Yeah. So, you know, so at the time I actually left Boeing for the next step in my career. We, you know, we were talking with some investors that were looking at sustainability, how we could, how they could find some projects. So, you know, we need to step back a little bit. This was back, you know, nearly 10 years ago and sustainability was new. And so it was, there was a time where investors were now looking at that as, OK, we need to fund some ESG projects, you know, where are those projects?

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
What are they delivering, etc. And I think airlines were just realizing that, you know, I think 2009 is around the time when airlines started to think, oh, maybe we need to do something about our carbon footprint and maybe we need to find a different source of non-fossil based fuel.

Olivier Rolland
Yeah. And, you know, airline, I’ve been convinced for a long time that they needed to do something about the fuel. But, you know, you have to realize that at that time, I don’t know the latest figure, but at that time, the cost of the fuel for an airline represent around 33 percent of their OPEX. And so, you know, when you think about that and when you buy rid of oil between 50 to 100 dollar, again, without any regulation, the cost of the market price of the system of emission fuel is going to be higher. So, you know, who is going to pay for that at the end of the day?

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
I think the question then is when does sustainability become economically inevitable?

Olivier Rolland
Well, actually, you know, that was my big if, you know, if I had one learning from my time in total and in Boeing, is that when we talk about sustainability, it’s true that we have the two major pillar, which is environmental sustainability and social sustainability. But there is a third one. We never talk about this one, which is the economic sustainability. And so we need to be economic. And the thing is we are not controlling, you know, what’s happening on the market. So when it’s not regulated, don’t take me wrong. So basically what this means is that you need to, without any regulation, you need to be able either to be on par on the performance and on the cost. Or if you have a higher cost, it means that you need to provide a higher value from a performance perspective to the market. I

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
think I think this is I really would love to go much deeper into this discussion because when we will talk about we could talk about, you know, the internalization of external effects and how do you account for, you know, carbon emissions should those be integrated in pricing somewhere somehow. But that may be a discussion for a different time because what you just what we just talked about, I think this is this is a really good storyline, starting from the tires, then the first from sugar. Now, this very innovative approach of with with Boeing and, you know, the Boeing trying to build supply chains and testing out, you know, do we have a significant interest in sustainability? Is there economic interest? Is there financial interest? But every time you you sort of arrive at this conclusion, the framework or the environment for this isn’t ready yet. Right. And that brings us to your next step, which is Toulouse White Biotech, I think. I’d love for you to explain a little bit how how that is now a departure from the side where you make things to maybe help things and build an environment where things can grow and happen.

Olivier Rolland
Yeah. So so when when I took over Toulouse Biotechnology, I, I actually took over the founder of Toulouse White Biotechnology. And and this founder, Pierre Monsan, had in mind that we would need to accelerate and really materialize the transformation of innovation from academia into real industrial solutions. So that was his vision. And and the way we’re thinking about that was if I want to be able to do that, I need to I need to gather in the same place, both the National Research Institute’s, the researchers and the industry partners. And so I joined at a time where this could be seen kind of a high progress startups in order to send this model into a more sustainable model at the end of the day. And and here it was it was a great way to actually look at all the different industries that were interested in biotechnology to receive where and when we could deliver innovative biotech solutions that could be a game changer for each and all of these industries. And we had partners, you know, from the from the petroleum side, from the tire side, from the cosmetic side, but also for the food and feed for the agro sector side. So it was a really way to see, OK, from my perspective now, where where could we see industrial biotech panning out maybe earlier than later in different areas?

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And also here, I mean, right. So so you’re trying to help projects succeed. But I guess also quite a few projects end up in the valley of death. Is there any learning for you how to help them through this very challenging moment in their existence or or is there one thing that you can two things that you can pinpoint that have to be there for very innovative projects to succeed?

Olivier Rolland
Well, you know, one thing that was, I think, a success factor of T.W.B. and I think is actually is still today is a technology platform because we we had, you know, the technology platforms that we we will make available, you know, directly or indirectly to our industry partners and startup partners. So in a way, it was it was an opportunity for them not to have to internalize and invest on this high technology platform and to leverage to W.B. ones. So I think that’s that was that was a clear success factor. And then, you know, we we were in contact with with a lot of startups. We incubated startups, meaning we hosted startups in our premises and and providing them with a means in order for them to to develop the technologies. And and, yeah, we saw some startup, you know, succeed and we saw some startup not succeed. And and, you know, at the end of the day, it’s in this in this biotechnology industry, it’s really about how much resources do I need and how much time do I have in order to deliver, I would say, a product that’s at a level of maturity good enough that I will be able to get traction from an industrial partners. With the right further investment at the end of the day,

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
I want to quickly touch on the technology platform because that did T.W.B. have the technology platform and provide it or is this a joint development of the companies involved? And how did you manage intellectual property and ownership of that?

Olivier Rolland
So there are a couple of pieces here. One was we we did when I when I was mentioning technology platform, I really means a platform meeting the rules of robots, the highest high throughput screening, facilities, infrastructure, infrastructure rights. Then there was another piece is which was that we had access to major French national research institutes in terms of researchers and in terms of IP. And we had already pre negotiated all the IP terms and license conditions that when we were starting a project with an industry partners, we didn’t have to worry about that. And that was a huge, huge gain in terms of time saving.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Yeah. And do you have maybe an example of a company that has worked out really successfully or a project?

Olivier Rolland
Well, you know, just to give you a couple of examples, you have, you know, the active company MicroPEP that started hosting in being hosted in T.W.B. and that is now flourishing in the US. And what are they making? They are making MicroPEP ties for as a bio solution for crops.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
So this chapter is for me very much about building the ecosystems. And you also said that you hosted startups and you had you had sort of an incubator there or not sort of, but you did have an incubator there. This is the moment where you stepped out a little bit from this hands on role. But at one moment, apparently you you felt an itch to get back to the trenches and do more actual work again. How did that I mean, I understand that both can be very interesting, but what did change for you that said, when you said, OK, I would like to go a little bit more into the practical side of things again.

Olivier Rolland
Well, so I so actually, you know, when I when I joined T.W.B., there were some funding partners, industry partners, and one of those was L’Oreal. And and, you know, during my my mandate as a CEO of T.W.B., I was reached out by L’Oreal to to come over and present what would it take to develop a biotech based products. And this was actually at the time where L’Oreal started its second corporate wide sustainability program called L’Oreal for the future, where biotechnology was one of the pillar of the of the transformation. And, you know, when I when I went there, I actually realized that L’Oreal was really serious about sustainability. And when I mean serious, it was not only there was a vision and an ambition, but there was conviction and they were putting the means behind the world. And I thought, well, actually, maybe this will be an opportunity for me to get even closer to the impact at the end of the day.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
This is a little bit surprising sort of next act in your career, right, because you went from, like I said in the beginning, fuels for airplanes. And now we’re talking about face creams, shower gels and moisturizers. There is one little step in between I want to mention because I think it’s interesting and it fits this role or this time where you look at the role of governments and ecosystems. You’ve been the appointed ambassador for sustainable materials for France 2030. Please, in a few words, explain what this role was because I do want to mention it.

Olivier Rolland
So before the role, maybe France 2030. France 2030 was the merger of two programs. One program was called a future investment program that was launched decades ago in order to prepare France for the next industries to innovation. And at that time, we were after the covid and there was another program called France Relance, basically how we relaunch the industry of France. And so the merger to program called France 2030 with I think nearly 50 billion euro. And the objective was actually to invest massively in innovation in specific field that would be the one for France industrial footprint in the near future. So by manufacturing, by technology, one of those. And so they they nominated the prime minister, nominated or appointed a few experts for each of the of the of the field selected. And the objective was really to be able to, you know, kind of in a bottom up approach to be able to relay the needs, the concerns, the challenges that the one who are practicing by technology are facing in the ground. Whether they are, you know, industry startups, academia.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
So this is I think this is interesting because you talked about in the beginning about Saf and but also bio based ingredients in tires and the challenges that these technologies have in succeeding if there is no regulatory environment supporting them or protecting them if they have to compete with, you know, oil at $50 or $70. What’s what’s the role that governments can play or should play in enabling more bio based or circular technologies in your eyes? And maybe use the example that France is pursuing here.

Olivier Rolland
Well, France recently was not about regulation, not just to be very clear. It was really about about financing the right project that will make the value of tomorrow, the industry of tomorrow. But your questions, I think there are a couple of things. One is one is regulation to ensure that we are in a developing field. So let me just come back to sustainable aviation fields. You know, at the time of development of sustainable aviation fuels, we said there was no regulation. That being said, there was regulation on terrestrial fuel.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Yeah.

Olivier Rolland
Right. And so basically what that means for, you know, each European when you go and fill your your tank with your car, you have biofuel, whether it’s a diesel or it’s or it’s gasoline.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
If you look at the pump, it’s E15, E10 is mixed in there. Exactly.

Olivier Rolland
And so there was no such a rule for sustainable aviation fuel. So in a way you create a distortion of competition for the use of the feedstock because, you know, we are we are we have similar technology and processes to go to terrestrial fuel or sustainable aviation fuel. But if you have a mandate on one and not on the other one, well, you will feel primarily the one that is mandatory. So I think for this type of large commodity markets, you need to ensure that you have a leveling field.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Yeah.

Olivier Rolland
And sometimes this means having a regulation in place, whether it’s, you know, it could be some constraining one with mandates, but it could also be some incentives. Yeah. You see the difference. You’re in the U.S. that they have exactly this approach. I am, you know, I am a big, big promoter of tax incentives because I really feel it’s it’s it’s it’s actually a positive way to to to kick off the crank on on this type of new new materials. Then if we put that apart, you know, right now, I mean, back in November, the European Commission published its revision of the bi-economy strategy. Yes. And so this is not legislative, but there will be some legislative acts such as the Secular Economy Act and the Biotechnology Act. And here they have kind of pinpointed the major pitfall that needs to be solved and and also some solutions and, you know, biomanufacturing and biotechnology is one of the pillars.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
So thanks for explaining this a little bit more in detail, because I think it’s very interesting to look at what role governments actually should play in promoting this. Now, I want to circle back. You were in the role of the T.W.B. You came in contact with L’Oreal, apparently a company that takes sustainability or decided to take sustainability very seriously. Today, you are responsible for looking at the supply chain and in particular, the scope three emissions in the supply chain. I think it’s a good moment for you to explain what it is you do at L’Oreal.

Olivier Rolland
Maybe let me just take a step back on what scope three is first. So I’m sitting within research innovation at L’Oreal and research innovation is really about going from innovative ingredients to high performing, safe, unsustainable formula that will be put into a product and sold to the market. When we are talking about the scope three, we are talking about two segments of the value chain. The upstream part of our value chain, meaning from the extraction of natural resources to the ingredient and raw material that we buy. And we are talking about the downstream side of the value chain, the use phase of our product, of the formula and the end of life. We take a shampoo, for instance. In order to produce a shampoo, you need to source different raw materials. Some of these raw materials, most of these raw materials actually are coming from bio-based resources. And then when you are in your shower and you are using shampoo, you use it and you rinse off the shampoo. And then the shampoo goes through the sink and comes back to the nature. So this is kind of the two segments of the chain I’m talking about right now. And when it comes to what our team is doing, we are looking at that. And we are looking at how we can help reduce the environmental impact of those two segments of the value chain. You mentioned emission. In true, we are looking at carbon. We are looking at how we can support the net zero trajectory of the group. But we are also looking at water because we need water in order to be able to produce the ingredients. We need water when we are rinsing off our products under the shower. And the ingredients end up in the water. And finally, we are looking at how we can make all these value chains much more resilient. In particular, in the context of climate change.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Let’s start at the end of the product because I think the whole upstream part, I want to go a little bit more in detail. But I don’t fully, or it’s difficult to understand how are you calculating the impact during product use? You were giving the example of a shampoo.

Olivier Rolland
And this is true for this part, but it’s true for every product that we put on the market. We are using life cycle analysis and the full life cycle analysis with all the different impact factors. And we want to make sure that at the end of the day, we have a better and volatile performance with a new product with the current one. So the

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
life cycle analysis, right? And my understanding is very high level on this. It’s literally from the first ingredient that is grown or produced or extracted for a product through production of this ingredient, energy used, fuel used, packaging, then use in production, processing, water for processing, emissions for processing, then putting it in a bottle, the production of the bottle, flying it somewhere or shipping it, consumer driving there, buying it, using it, how much energy or waste is produced to decompose the product until it’s gone. Exactly.

Olivier Rolland
It’s all of that. So you’re really looking at the entire chain. In an exhaustive way.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Okay. This sounds complex and difficult for a shampoo or a face cream.

Olivier Rolland
I mean, there are some specialists about that. So we, you know, some decades ago, we actually developed our own tool, which is called the SPOT, Sustainable Product Optimization Tool. That is based on life cycle analysis and that has been developed with independent and external academic scientists, such as, you know, C. R. Egg in Montreal, which is one of the leading institutes in this respect, that is using standard methods completely recognized at this international level.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
I’m digging into this point because at the beginning of the L’Oreal part of your L’Oreal story, you said this company is taking this very seriously. And I think it is so easy to become overwhelmed or confused as a consumer because everyone’s shouting, oh, we’re sustainable, you know, we’re trying this, we’re really investing in this. But I think, let’s emphasize today, we’re sitting here in Paris at a large office building of L’Oreal. There’s a laboratory. There are people working on, you know, the theoretical side of it. So there is serious investment resources spent on this part of investigating the supply chain, of replacing fossil ingredients and reducing the emissions. How does this fit in the profit orientation of L’Oreal? And has the company really said, we’re going to give up some part of our revenue to make sure this happens?

Olivier Rolland
I think we need to take a step back here and to maybe go back to the sustainability history of L’Oreal. This didn’t start yesterday, started like more than 30 years ago, where we opened our first environmental lab and the idea was to understand how our formula that ends up in nature interacts with the environment. After that, you know, we had several developments, you know, putting low carbon energy on our site, you know, water loop, you know, the recycle water on our site. And this leads us to the 2010-ish, where we launched the first corporate-wide program called Sharing Beauty With All. And the idea here, and this is actually the time where we developed the SPOT tool, the Sustainable Product Competition tool, with how we can improve the entire impact of our product, right? And then this led us to the current program I was mentioning, so L’Oreal for the Future, 2031 to 2030, which is how we can help the world value chain to improve. And within research innovation, we use a scientific framework that is recognized, which is a planetary boundaries. Coming back to scope three, you know, we have a major objective, which is basically the defossilization of the raw material portfolio that we use. Our objective is by 2030 to have 75% of our raw materials either derived from nature, nature being plants or abundant minerals when it comes to inorganic compounds, or derived from recycled materials, right? And within research and innovation, you know, we are 4,000 scientists, 1.3 billion euro as budget, and we are developing products along three axis. One is how do we make sure that our products are safe, because there is no compromise on safety, right? Number two, how do we make sure that we deliver to our consumer the most suited performance? And number three, I would say, so last but not the least, how do we ensure that those products are more sustainable? And so now sustainability is completely embedded within research innovation, and the way we actually formulate that, we call it the Green Sciences Program.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And this is, what’s the Green Sciences Program? This is part of the product development?

Olivier Rolland
Well, it’s actually a way for us to identify on the upstream supply chain, what are the steps, the processes that are the most environmental friendly in order to produce raw materials. And today we have four of those. One is what we call ecoextraction. It’s basically how we can extract ingredients from waste type materials. Just to give you an example, we are using the petals of the rose for fragrances, but when you prune the petals, you have the rosewood. And so we developed a way to extract, without any organic solvent, some active ingredient from the rosewood. So that’s ecoextraction. The second one is green chemistry, and it’s basically according to the 12th principle of green chemistry, in order to reduce the amount of resources, the amount of energy that we need, and to reduce the waste that we have. One example I can give you is one of our blockbuster active ingredient, Proxylane, which is about skin elasticity. And so Proxylane today is produced from a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry, in using some chemical catalysis without any water.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Which is a new development that you researched. This

Olivier Rolland
was a new development at the time. And then number three is biotechnology, and that’s kind of the most recent one. And now you see in our products several active ingredients, such as vitamin C, such as hyaluronic acid that are produced through biotechnology. But here I just talked about the transformation of feedstock into raw materials. You know, as we are defossilizing our raw material portfolio, most of our ingredients are and will be bio-based. Which means that we also need to be very clear on the sustainability part on the agricultural sector. And so here we have developed a fourth pillar, which is called sustainable cultivation. How do we ensure that the agricultural segment is being done with more sustainable practices towards the agricultural agriculture at the end of the day?

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And do you work with farmers for that?

Olivier Rolland
No, we, as a research innovation level, we actually work on tools, methodology, standards, in order to want to understand what’s going on, you know, and then to be able to give recommendation to our colleagues from operations who are responsible for our supply chain. So for instance, we developed with the French National Agricultural Institute INRAE, one of the researchers, a framework called the field cultivation index, which is a decorative form that the farmer can feel, and we can evaluate where they are in terms of the sustainability of the actual practices, and we can give some recommendations.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
I would love to hear about your day here, because this is all, and this is all, I understand these are initiatives at the level of L’Oreal, but how does your day look? What are you working on at the moment, or what are the things that you do? I

Olivier Rolland
mean, you know, as I was mentioning, we are leading three major strategic axis. One is around net zero trajectory, so it’s about decarbonization. So it’s about, you know, how we can define some recommendations so that our colleagues in the operation can inquire with the suppliers in order to get the value chain. One is around water. So, you know, one thing that happened last year when we did the mid-term review of our L’Oreal for the Future program, we actually had a new objective on water projects. So what was the objective? It was about to be able to provide to water saving technologies to our customers living in water stress area so that they can perform their own work. They are hygiene and they are beauty routine. And so, you know, this is, you know, this is at the top of our mind on how we can provide the right solution in this respect.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
But I’m going to dig a little bit deeper. Like, what is your role in this specifically? Do you coordinate teams? Do you research?

Olivier Rolland
Here we are really about how we can frame this, you know, how we can strategically frame this topic in order for our colleagues in the other part of the research innovation and in operations to deploy. So our team, it’s more about strategy, you know, it’s about awareness, understanding strategic framing and defining recommendation, whether those are position or whether those are guidelines, whether those are innovative territory that we need to explore.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
So for me, paraphrasing now to understand, you would give a recommendation to the shampoo colleagues who then maybe in marketing implement a certain campaign that talks about shorter showering, which is just as effective with this shampoo.

Olivier Rolland
It’s not just talk about it’s a it’s really about, you know, we need to we need to achieve this type of objectives, you know, like the defossilization and water saving. This is kind of of the strategy. So how do we how do we make sure that you have what you need in order to be able to deliver on that?

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Maybe looking at at your current position at L’Oreal, if I’m a conscious consumer, and I want to make sure the products I buy have the smallest possible impact on our world and are, you know, careful with the resources that they use. Is there a way for me to identify these products in at L’Oreal? Are they somehow marked?

Olivier Rolland
So actually, we we gather with other players, major players of the beauty sector to form a consortium called the Eco Beauty Score. And the Eco Beauty Score is actually like, you know, later ABCDE, that provides you an indication with the environmental impacts of the products.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
And that’s a voluntary industry initiative.

Olivier Rolland
Yes, that is starting to be deployed right now in Europe.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Oh, so it’s like on food, right? This you have this food. No, this is not that I mean the index, right, that we know it from from the supermarket.

Olivier Rolland
It’s similar to that in terms of in terms of the labeling for for the consumers. And the good thing is, you know, it’s it’s completely cross industry.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Okay, so interesting. So there’s this is going to be deployed in the near future? It is being deployed right now. Okay, cool. Maybe for closing, I have a few more or I have one or two thoughts that I wanted to ask you a bit more challenging if you’re in a corporate environment, sometimes compromise is unavoidable. If there’s one sustainability compromise you refuse to make even or is there one compromise you refuse to make even when it would have been easier commercially to do it?

Olivier Rolland
You know, I was mentioning, you know, all of our products are going through the lifecycle analysis. And for us, you know, there is no compromise here. And I just going to give you, you know, when one specific example we had recently take a hair colour product, in a hair colour product you have ammonia, you have hydrogen peroxide, those are produced from hydrogen. And you know, when we want to greenify those some of our suppliers were proposing and are proposing what we call green hydrogen based solutions. You know, for those if you don’t know what green hydrogen is, it’s basically the use of water and electrolysis in order to produce hydrogen. And so, you know, on the paper, it’s great. But you know, we looked into that and as you were mentioning what we do, like my team looked into that. And we actually realized that there are two major, two major stakes here. One is what is the energy, what is the carbon intensity of the energy being used for the electrolysis? This is what is obvious. But there’s another one that is much less obvious. And nobody talked about that. It’s what is the availability of water in the watershed where you are withdrawing the water? And this is super impactful. And you know, thanks to this, we can discriminate between solutions that are, that makes much more sense, like, you know, in the Nordic countries, to solution that doesn’t really make sense in some water scarce region.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
I think that’s a really important view on things that displacement effects and also scarcity of some resources that seem very circular or green is sometimes not what it seems at first. Maybe to close off, the last thing I want to ask you is about your career, because I think it’s a really, it’s a really interesting career. We have touched many fields. And for someone who’s early in his career and who wants to become a bridge person between science and strategy, what is the skill that that mattered most that are probably worth developing or working on?

Olivier Rolland
Well, you know, I think for me, you know, if I if I were to do to give you a couple, I think one is the ability to zoom in and zoom out. Basically, the ability to be able to really go and understand what’s going on really, and to be able to zoom out and be able to talk to other people, not from the field about this. I think that’s one. In order to do that, and that’s number two, I think it’s the ability to be able to talk to people with different backgrounds. You know, you don’t talk to a scientist as you talk to someone from our marketing division, right? And so I think that’s another another skill that is that is super important. And, you know, maybe the last one, and this is maybe my favorite one. At the end of the day, you know, when it comes to sustainability, we can be passionate and I am passionate about sustainability. But at the end of the day, we should not forget that we need to make a viable business out of it. So we have we have to be business driven at the same time.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
Well, thank you very much. I think these are good closing words. Once again, thank you for taking the time for having me here and for talking to me. It was a pleasure. And I think it’s a super interesting story. I could spend much more time diving deeper into it. Thank you very much.

Olivier Rolland
Thank you, Mansur. Likewise, with pleasure. Thanks.

Mansur Philipp Gharabaghi
That was Olivier Rolland from L’Oreal. We covered a lot of ground from fermentation, chemistry and aviation fuel to the hidden complexity of making a shampoo truly sustainable. But if there’s one thing I hope you take away, it’s this sustainable innovation rarely fails because the science is wrong. It fails because the economics, the policy and the timing all have to line up at the same moment. Olivier has spent his entire career working on that alignment. And what struck me most is that he never stopped believing that alignment was possible, even when the oil price collapsed and wiped out a decade of work overnight. If this conversation made you think differently about what sustainability actually requires, follow Climate Forward on your favorite podcast app. And if you’re already listening regularly, thank you for being part of this community. See you next time on Climate Forward.