A look back at the Jean Marc Jancovici conference at Neoma

This Thursday, December 1, the Neorateur association hosted, in partnership with the Reims Urban Planning Agency, Jean Marc Jancovici for an exceptional conference on environmental transition. Designed for Neoma students and elected officials from the city of Reims, this conference brought together nearly 500 people who came out of it more enlightened regarding the challenges of tomorrow. A look back at this event which allows us collectively to reflect on our future lifestyles, consumption and work.

Read more : Financial Times ranking of the best business schools

???? You can find the conference on this link.

I Who is Jean-Marc Jancovici?

Born in 1962, Jean Marc Jancovici is a French engineer, teacher and lecturer specializing in environmental issues. Coming from a family of scientists, he himself studied science in the preparatory class at Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He then joined Polytechnique, and graduated in 1981.
He then quickly became interested in the challenges of sustainable development, then specialized significantly in the means of measuring the environmental impact of companies. In 2004, he developed the Bilan Carbone method which remains today the global unit of measurement for corporate CO2 emissions.
Subsequently, he co-founded the consulting firm Carbone 4, then throws the Think Thank The Shift Project in 2010.

In recent years, this engineer has enjoyed dazzling popularity in the media, in our schools and with political actors. Through his conferences, Jean Marc Jancovici addresses the climate crisis and the challenges of environmental transition in a quantified and synthetic way. It is in this context that he intervened in Neoma on December 1st.

II Link between energy and climate

Since the industrial revolution, our consumption of fossil fuels has continued to grow. A factor of productivity and growth, the energy extracted from fossil resources (coal / oil / gas in the lead) grew exponentially. This consumption has been accompanied by a strong and constant increase in our CO2 emissions.

At the same time, Economic Growth – measured with the GDP indicator – also experienced a steady growth curve. The three data are also intimately correlated, it is with this demonstration that Jean Marc Jancovici started his conference.

So GDP = CO2 = NRJ

The “classroom rockstar” engineer then wanted to demonstrate that machines are at the center of our lifestyles. Despite the apparent tertiarization of Western economies, and the office jobs that the majority of us will occupy, energy is everywhere. Thus, the greenhouse gas emissions that also accompany them.

It therefore seems necessary to (re)think our relationship to objects and to question the origin of our energy supplies. At a time when Germany is reactivating its coal-fired power stations with force, nuclear power stations seem to be the most CO2-neutral and most efficient solution for meeting our energy needs.

III Systematically thinking regarding environmental transition

While the importance of changing our individual behaviors is mainly highlighted (heating at 19°C, no machine following 6 p.m. and turtlenecks, etc.), the co-founder of Carbone 4 stressed the importance of thinking systemically regarding environmental transition. This is the idea of ​​Kaya’s equation

Equation de Kaya

Thus, Jean Marc Jancovici illustrated that four factors enter into our CO2 emissions:

• Carbon intensity in the energies used
• The energy intensity of production
• GDP per capita
• The total population

With a population growth forecast of 20% by 2050 per year, an energy intensity of production which decreases on average by 2% per year with scientific advances; and an energy carbon intensity that fucks 2.5% every year. It appears necessary that, at a minimum, the average GDP per capita on a world scale decreases by 1%. The question then arises of the distribution of this reduction: equality or equity?

The path to sobriety, degrowth or degrowth (the three terms being similar) seems inevitable and essential. Tomorrow, we will have to consume less and consume better, stop buying clothes to wear them only once and refuse certain purchases that are fundamentally not useful to us… This is the meaning of civic responsibility.


Read more : Interview with Timothée Parrique, the economist who popularizes degrowth

IV Rethinking lessons in our schools

The president of The Shift Project highlighted the current gap in our school lessons with the awareness of the climate issues that it is up to us to have. Today, despite back-to-school seminars or sporadic capsules on environmental issues, finance, marketing or strategy courses in our schools forget and neglect the requirements of environmental transition. And recent report from the Shift [ClimaSup Business]produced with the participation of Audencia and Essec, invites to mobilize higher education for the climate.

“This project, which brings together many schools and other organizations, aims to transform common lessons, but also to decline the knowledge and skills required by business sector, in order to train managers capable of implementing the ecological transition. »

It therefore seems urgent that the Grandes Ecoles modify the content of their courses in depth and that we, students and citizens, take a step back from the knowledge that is transmitted to us and critically analyze our teachings, which suffer, for many, from a lack of consideration and adaptation to the world of tomorrow.

???? You can find the conference on this link