Raising awareness about Energy Sufficiency

Energy sufficiency is one of the three main pillars of the energy transition, together with energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy sources. Energy sufficiency is an approach that aims to reduce energy consumption through changes in behaviour, lifestyle and collective organisation (i.e. less car use, more local and better quality food, etc.). Energy sufficiency is therefore defined by what is a matter of lifestyle choices and thus behavioural choices, differentiating from energy efficiency which concerns the use of technologies that reduce energy consumption at the scale of a given object or system (less energy-consuming vehicle, renovated building, etc.).

AREC Île-de-France launched a series of six workshops on energy sufficiency in order to integrate this issue into the regional energy and climate strategy. Indeed, sufficiency is a crucial aspect of the strategy but no means or objectives were defined at this stage.

The workshops had several goals:

• Create a common culture and begin to imagine together a chosen, fair, collective and innovative sufficiency for Île-de-France;
• Defining sufficiency;
• Addressing psychological barriers;
• Identify barriers to sufficiency;
• Identify the levers for implementing sufficiency;
• Take advantage of the lessons learnt in sufficiency projects already developed in the region and across European countries.

Materials gathered during the presentations and exchanges will allow the launch a second step: recommendations for the Regional Council which will highlight a regional sufficiency strategy with the following components:

• Tools: awareness campaigns, nudges, competitions between families, training, social media activities;
• Target: young people, workers, elected people, etc.;
• Financing of the projects;
• Stakeholders and experts in the sufficiency sphere;
• Energy consumer sectors: buildings, services, industry, agriculture.

Experts and partners which were working in these workshops will be associated for the follow-up of the study. Local authorities will be selected test the recommendations in practice.

Visit: arec-idf.fr