Olivier Babeau is the president of the Sapiens Institute (think-tank).
Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Energy Transition, announced the launch on October 10 of a communication campaign on eco-gestures. What are eco-gestures? Are these makeshift measures?
Measures of ill fortune then.
There is obviously a lot of energy waste that we can avoid with simple changes in behavior.
Unnecessary lamps or too many degrees (or less in summer) are nonsense.
It is good to be aware of this.
But from the elimination of waste to the imposition of rationing, there is only one step that the logic of sobriety makes it possible to cross.
It is always difficult to distinguish the essential from the superfluous: from what heat is each additional degree a luxury?
We leave the field of energy efficiency and rationality to enter the much more dynamic field of morality.
Unable to ensure abundance, the government prefers to focus on managing shortages.
He was an organizer of prosperity,
Read alsoEnergy sobriety: a plan will soon be announced for Paris
Does communication supplant long-term economic and energy policies? And, is it effective?
We know the adage that “to govern is to foresee”.
But we have nothing planned at all!
The energy boat was led by the currents, without anticipation or course.
As often, the State has proven to be the worst shareholder for EDF: both particularly greedy because it is impecunious itself, devoid of strategy and incapable of deciding.
Let us think that, despite the urgency, the decision to launch the construction of future essential EPRs and to relaunch cutting-edge research on new-generation nuclear power has not even been taken.
The policy of small gestures cannot take the place of great ambition.
It is a rather poor substitute.
Ultimately, it would like to hide the responsibility of the State through the meticulousness of its precepts by giving credence to the idea that the cuts will be our fault, and not that of our leaders.
Drunk with soothing little drawings and “motion design” where the citizen is treated like an eternal minor, the State multiplies the proofs of thoughtfulness to justify its existence and spare us the effort of thinking.
Olivier Babau
Called “Every gesture counts”, this campaign will serve to “
inform the French people of the most effective gestures to reduce their consumption
”, specified the Minister.
This obviously reminds us of prevention on health gestures during the Covid.
What inspires you?
It is useful to inform the populations of the good gestures.
But we had already seen with the Covid how simple information had gradually turned into an incredible skein of prescriptions.
Signage on the ground, direction of traffic, masking techniques, selective closing of shelves, etc.: administrative creativity expresses an incredible capacity for refinement, raising the body of rules to the rank of art.
For lack of having a vision of the future paths of prosperity and for lack of controlling the evolutions of the world largely dictated by technologies which escape it, the State has become a social engineer.
He excels at producing a continuous stream of recommendations whose main function is to remind us that the nanny-state is looking after us.
To raise awareness and inform consumers, the operator of the electricity transmission network RTE already relies on its Ecowatt tool: it allows French people to know in real time the level of electricity consumption in France. Three colors (green, orange and red) are associated with a level of consumption. Do the French need color to envisage the crisis and the necessary sobriety? Is the State in a process of infantilization?
We love handing out stickers like in primary school.
In the same way that the school replaces the notes, considered too violent, with nice smileys, we are given benevolent incentives.
But we want to forget that this kind of exhortation to consume less in the name of network saturation can only be of very limited effectiveness: what economists call the drama of the "free rider" will make everyone want to be the one who does not make an effort unless directly prompted.
Much more effective would be the ability to know its consumption in detail, and even more effective a clear differential pricing to encourage the deportation of certain consumption.
The price signal is neither smiling nor colorful, but it is still what the