NégaWatt has two main activities. First, it engages in energy forecasting, establishing scenarios for energy transition in France or Europe. Secondly, négaWatt advocates, meaning it promotes key issues to governments, parliamentarians, civil society actors, businesses, or local authorities, particularly focusing on building renovation, which is a major challenge of the energy transition.
"We primarily produce knowledge, approaches, and methodologies, and we are quite proud because our négaWatt triptych, 'sobriety, efficiency, renewable energies,' is found in many publications from local authorities,” explains Hélène Gassin. “We receive numerous testimonials from people who tell us that it has helped them organize their work and visualize the path forward. It is important to provide the tools so that organizations can take ownership and gain some autonomy to move towards greater sobriety.”
It has been established that the sobriety plan of 2022 allowed for savings close to 10% of total energy consumption in France. “Sobriety is the first pillar of our policy, and it is a topic on which we are somewhat fewer in number working. Much less is being implemented to facilitate action on sobriety compared to other sectors of the transition,” specifies Hélène Gassin.
"At négaWatt, we talk a lot about organizational and cooperative sobriety. So, of course, everyone needs to be involved, and the transition must be just, meaning we must consider the situation of households or businesses. Without social justice, it will be difficult to achieve an ecological transition,” concludes Hélène Gassin.
