Among other unintended consequences, soaring energy prices will have caused a joint forum of the three major French companies to encourage… energy sobriety. Patrick Pouyanné for the oil company TotalEnergies (ex-Total), Jean-Bernard Lévy for the electrician EDF, Catherine MacGregor for the gas company Engie (ex-GDF) appealed “to awareness”. That is “a collective and individual action so that each of us – each consumer, each company – changes its behavior and immediately limits its consumption of energy, electricity, gas and petroleum products”.
These groups, however, taking advantage of the energy sold, their column of June 26 in The Sunday newspaper is disconcerting. The three highlight the desire to spare the country from unfortunate supply disruptions. In sum, the ” need [de] manage future peaks in consumption and [d’]cushion the technical hazards or geopolitical shocks that we may have to face”.
In hollow, their initiative underlines all the more the absence of strong actions of the government, until then, on the energy savings to accomplish. In particular with a view to next winter, which the national operator of the electricity transmission network, RTE, is already placing “under special vigilance”. The three leaders are, in fact, pushing the public authorities to clarify their positions on a question that has long remained outside the presidential rhetoric. In his speech in Belfort on February 10, the President of the Republic has certainly already announced that the “the first major project was to consume less energy”. Quit dropping the word “sobriety”. A notable development for Emmanuel Macron who, in September 2020, in front of the digital bosses, mocked the opponents of 5G, those who wanted “return to the oil lamp”followers, according to him, of “amish pattern”.
“Quite remarkable”
Change of foot, therefore, even if, in Belfort, the Head of State, future candidate for his re-election two months later, continued to reject any policy based on“energy austerity”. The call for sobriety from energy companies would therefore not bother, it is said on the government side. “Sobriety is not about decline, it’s about being more efficient”, we decode in the entourage of the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. And to highlight the trip of the latter to Ile-de-France, with the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, Thursday, June 23, on the theme of energy.
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