On July 14, the day commemorating the storming of the Bastille, French President Emmanuel Macron offered the French people a new revolution: sobriety.
Posted on July 24
But no, he wasn’t talking about alcohol…
He spoke rather of “energy sobriety”. An idea still often considered radical, but which, thanks to the situation in which Europe now finds itself, is now becoming possible.
The efforts that the French and Europeans are currently making to reduce their energy consumption and limit global warming will not be enough to get them through the winter. Another issue – geopolitical this time – forces them to raise the bar now: wean themselves off their dependence on Russian natural gas.
President Macron has launched a goal: to reduce energy consumption by 10% within two years, compared to 2019.
It will therefore not be enough to consume more efficiently. We will have to consume less, period. Sobriety, in alcohol as in energy, does not necessarily mean abstinence, but it opposes excessive consumption. To an energetic “drunk state”.
In fact, the French can be reassured: the sacrifices that are asked of them are not so restrictive. “We are going to try to pay attention collectively in the evening to the lights which are useless”, said Emmanuel Macron. Those in offices, those in store windows, in particular. But also, we recommend setting the heating to 19°C and the air conditioning to 26°C.
Nothing too painful so far.
The irony… is that many of these measures already exist in French law. The sobriety plan, said the Ministry of Energy Transition, will be to “enforce what is in the law”.
For a revolution, that’s quite a revolution!
But if it is necessary to speak of revolution, it is above all by the mere fact of hearing the word “sobriety” in the words of Emmanuel Macron.
Throughout the discourse of the fight against global warming, “energy sobriety” is one of the controversial words such as “degrowth”. To speak of sobriety is often to expose oneself to being treated as anti-capitalist and retrograde. Or, as Mr. Macron himself mocked in 2020, as a follower of the “Amish model” who advocates the “return to the oil lamp”…
Emmanuel Macron was above all one of those who displayed confidence in “technological solutionism”, the idea that new technologies could solve complex problems such as climate change.
By adopting his sobriety plan, the French president has therefore just recognized that the overconsumption of energy will not be resolved in three clicks thanks to a new app from Silicon Valley. It turns a radical idea into a valid, applicable, realistic avenue.
In a way, he de-radicalized sobriety.
This perception will eventually resonate with us. Who will dare to qualify energy sobriety as the fad of an extremist ecologist?
Canada is not in Europe’s precarious situation with regard to its energy supply. There is no shortage of electricity, oil and gas on the continent. And we obviously don’t hesitate: Canadians consume twice as much energy per person as the French*…
In Quebec, the word “sobriety” is still rarely mentioned. We prefer to speak of “energy efficiency”, which does not imply a reduction in consumption. We are racing for the electrification of transport, food production in greenhouses or the hosting of computer data centers (and other cryptocurrency patents), when we will have to find all these new megawatts somewhere.
Just because the cellar is full doesn’t mean you have to get drunk every night…
In the meantime, in France, now that the question “should we adopt sobriety?” has been settled, the conversation can continue on another level.
What goes into the “logic of sobriety”? Publish an “electricity weather report” to know when you should pay particular attention to consumption? Reduce the speed on the roads to 110 km/h (!) to avoid over-consuming gasoline? Introduce teleworking over three days? Reduce the cost of public transport? Imposing “car-free Sundays” in cities? — a proposal, we specify, which comes not from Greenpeace, but from the International Energy Agency!
Debates that we will have to follow closely, suddenly.
*According to 2019 figures from the IEA, Canada consumes 340 gigajoules (GJ) of energy per year per person, and France, 150 GJ. This data represents the energy to run industries, businesses, institutions, transportation, residential buildings and agriculture.