PROMETHEE : Projet d'Observatoire
Multidisciplinaire de l'Énergie pour une Transition Humaine, Économique et
Écologique
Multidisciplinary Energy Observatory Project for a Human, Economic, and Ecological Transition
At the end of 2022, CEA I-Tésé, the CERREV laboratory at the University of Caen/Normandy/MRSH, the CSI at Mines Paris, the Dôme de Caen and theIRTS Normandie-Caen launched Prométhée, a multidisciplinary observatory focusing on practices for adapting to energy crises and energy efficiency. The Observatory received financial support from the CEA and Ademe.
The “involuntary collective sufficiency” announced in France for the 2022-2023 winter provided an opportunity for public discussion of the various energy transition scenarios, bringing the concept of sufficiency back into the spotlight. How were messages encouraging moderation in energy consumption received by civil society as a whole, given that our social and cultural context is based on the ideas of development and growth? How is this call for sufficiency being put into practice? Ultimately, is “sufficiency”, often perceived as merely making sacrifices in consumption to maintain the technical and economic system, the key to achieving individual and collective autonomy for a genuine socio-technical and political energy transition?
Prométhée's partners have joined forces to analyse the strategies used by various stakeholders to adapt to and manage the impending energy crisis, combining their expertise in economics, law, sociology and participatory research.
A little over a year after the observatory was created, the initial results were published in a special edition of Vertigo magazine. This work comprised five aspects:
- A series of participatory science workshops (using the Living Lab method) were held to enable the public to express their views on specific issues relating to the energy crisis and energy sufficiency, and to attempt to develop use scenarios that would partially resolve the problems initially identified.
- Around 30 interviews were conducted among French households to understand how consumer citizens have weathered this energy crisis and how they envision a future in which energy-related issues have or have not been resolved.
- An in-depth analysis of the various energy scenarios involving lifestyle changes was carried out.
- A study of European energy policy and its evolution was conducted.
- Finally, the debate in the French press on energy sufficiency was observed.
The objective is to prolong this work by regularly re-interviewing households in order to observe the evolution over time of the results observed during the winter of 2022-2023.