The négaWatt Association

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The implementation of the Paris Agreement is calling for reinforced action in all member States. At the European level, reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 will require an ambitious and coordinated energy transition strategy.

The Energy Union initiative and the recent Green Deal announced by European Commission’s president Ursula Von der Leyen are great opportunities to do so. Until today, at the European level, no scenario has been constructed in a bottom-up manner, starting from national trajectories and has proposed the adequate level of ambition on all sustainability issues, beyond technological issues alone.

To support such progress, négaWatt is working with a network of key European organisations on the construction of a European energy and climate scenario that evaluates all potentials for energy demand reduction (sufficiency and efficiency) and renewable energy development. This vision will be as ambitious as possible, targeting carbon neutrality and a 100% renewable energy mix at the European level by 2050 at the latest.

An ambitious methodology : sufficiency, efficiency, and renewable energies

The project aims at developing one the most ambitious decarbonisation pathway for Europe. It will propose an action plan to reach carbon neutrality and a 100% renewable mix at the European level by 2050 at the latest.

This scenario will focus on the question of energy sufficiency : how can we rethink and redesign individual and collective practices to favour activities and services that are intrinsically low on energy use ? The sufficiency potential is enormous at the European level, but is rarely considered at its full scale in European decarbonisation pathways. With this work, we hope to show that a comprehensive policy articulating sufficiency, efficiency and renewable development is key to reach the 1,5°C climate goal.

A scenario built on national characteristics

This project is based on a unique approach : the European scenario will be developed through a dialogue with national scenario makers in order to aggregate national visions into a European one. We will promote a European strategy that fully takes into account national specificities while also looking at optimisation gains of a coordinated action at the European level.

A European network of technical partners

This project is led in collaboration with a network of national and European organisations. Since 2018, partners are engaged in technical dialogue to ensure the collective development of this project.
This dialogue has allowed partners to question their work and modelling approaches, and share best practices, which results in built-up capacity and raised ambition. Thematic working groups and methodological meetings are also regularly organised. Through this network, partners have been able to share information on the ways policies or actions are supported in different member States, and how setting conditions may vary from one region to another.

The network includes 18 partners, covering 15 European countries. Additional organisations may join the network during the project.

More information on the network of partners on this webpage (in French only).

A project built in three steps

• Prefiguration phase (2018-2019) : the project has started in 2018 with a prefiguration study, which allowed us to set the overall framework of the project : development of the network of partners, definition of common objectives, work programme, and funding options.
• Development of the European scenario (2019-2021) : the objective of the project is to publish a first European energy and climate scenario based on the aggregation of national visions. négaWatt is leading the core work of the project, ensuring collective implication of partners in important steps of the process (discussion over the methodology, choice of indicators, definition of hypotheses in different countries and at the European level).
• Going more in-depth (2021- ) : based on the first European scenario, partners are planning to launch complementary projects to develop more in-depth analyses on sectoral or cross-sectoral issues. Partners from the network have put forward a project proposal within the Horizon 2020 programme to support collaborative work on these aspects.

Work plan from 2019 to 2021

• Launching the technical dialogue (June 2019 - June 2020)
  • Validate a common methodological approach (which we refer to as ‘sustainability merit order’) to define fundamentals that will be applied in a coherent way by scenario makers at national and European level.
  • Develop common tools to allow the inter-comparison, modelling, aggregation and integration of European trajectories.
  • Animate the technical dialogue with the network of partners on key issues for the scenario, such as energy sufficiency in building and transport, and industry and materials.
• Developing ambitious national trajectories (May 2020 - June 2021)
  • Translation of existing national exercises into a common language
  • Deepening of the common tools and the exchange on the construction of sufficiency assumptions and on the methodology to be adopted to strengthen national trajectories and cover countries not covered by the network
  • Complete existing national scenarios and build more ambitious trajectories by testing the project’s methodology and looking at all sustainability potentials in covered countries.
• Build a European strategy for energy transition based on the aggregation of national visions (January 2021 - April 2022)
  • Work on the aggregation of reinforced national trajectories at the European level and their integration within a coordinated strategy, ensuring that climate and energy targets set for the project are reached.
  • Develop narrative aspects, communication tools and disseminate the project’s results to key stakeholders.

Project funding

The budget covers main activities of the project : coordination of the project, animation of the network of partners, participation of members to main technical meetings, development of modelling tools, technical work on the reinforcement of national scenarios, development of the European trajectory, and dissemination activities.

négaWatt and its network of partners are looking for additional funding to complete this budget as well as to extend it in order to support a more active implication of national partners in the project. Additional funds allocated to the network of partners would reinforce our collaborative approach by supporting a more in-depth input from national partners in thematic groups and throughout the modelling steps of the project.

Our funders

• Our members and donors
  négaWatt has organised a crowdfunding campaign to support the project in Spring 2019 which resulted in a total of 51 760€ collected. négaWatt has also allocated a part of its overall budget to this project.
• Foundations and others
  Key foundations have been supporting this project since the prefiguration phase : The European Climate Foundation (2050 Pathways Platform), Foundation for the progress of Humankind, Fondation un monde par tous, and Watt for Change foundation.
  The French Agency for ecological transition ADEME also supports the project.

Support the project !

If you have any questions, or would like to support the project, please contact :

• Mathilde DJELALI, Project manager : mathilde.djelali///at///negawatt.org - +33766776687
• Stephane BOURGEOIS, Network manager : stephane.bourgeois///at///negawatt.org - +33633320993

Up to date on 12/10/2020