Intervention à KEDGE

Une conférence passionnante avec des étudiants qui s'interrogent sur l'intégration du facteur transition énergétique dans leurs projets.

Merci à toute l'équipe KEDGE : à refaire !

Verbatim de mon intervention (en anglais) :

Good morning everybody,

I am so happy and so proud to be today here with all of you… not because I love so much South of France area and probably not either because I hardly resist to any Jean Christophe Carteron invitation… but rather because I do believe it is worth to share our creative and respective experiences… especially when these experiences might contribute to better understand how much we need to cooperate and stretch our imagination and consciousness in order to face one of the most difficult challenge humanity ever had to face: fighting climate change or as our French President, Emmanuel Macron, stated last year to challenge Donald Trump “making our Planet great again”.

Let me just remind you that our Universe appeared 14.5 billions years ago It took 10 billions years to shape our Earth and more than 4 billions years to get it prepared for Human life, Human life just appeared around 200.000 years ago … and you know what? It just took only 300 years to bring C02 level in the atmosphere at a point where the global eco-system allowing life is seriously under threat … and we have now less than 30 years to sort it out and find ways to the post-carbon world… 30 years my dear colleagues... TIC TAC TIC TAC…

Here and in every single place of the planet we are all facing the paradox of our humanity: the paradox of understanding how powerful and how vulnerable we are at the same time.

So… from now on, for sure, you know everything counts… For those, around us, not here today of course, may be, time to tell them the legend of the Hummingbird (Colibri as we say in French): You know, a long time ago and in a faraway place, or so the legend goes, there was a huge forest fire that was raging the countryside. All the animals were terrified, running around in circles, screaming, crying, and helplessly watching the impending disaster.

But there in the middle of the flames, and above the cowering animals, was a tiny hummingbird busy flying from a small pond to the fire, each time fetching a few drops with its break to throw on the flames. And then again and again. After a while, and old grouchy armadillo, annoyed by this ridiculous useless agitation on the part of the hummingbird, cried out: “Tiny bird! Don’t be a fool. It is not with those miniscule drops of water one after the other that you are going to put out the fire and save us all!”

To which the hummingbird replied: “Could be, but I am going to do my bit”

By the way, that’s what I try to do myself… Let me tell you a little bit more about that… I cannot start without telling all of you I am in a kind of redemption phase in my life… Actually, that’s the best way to confess I spent 20 years of my professional life fully involved in the oil and gas business, fossil fuels today clearly identified as the main responsible for CO2 emissions… and I can tell you, I was then, fully convinced to be actively contributing to improve the world so much depending on energy.

You know energy is at the very core of our very normal actual life. Without energy,

- no plane flying, and therefore no way to get here for many of us travelling from abroad

- no cars or taxis to get to know the wonderful Cassis Calanques

- no computers no mail, no mobile phones, no way to closely connect from people all around the world,… and I could continue with a long list of examples highlighting that even if we are not so much aware sometimes, we hardly spend more than one hour without spending energy.

Thanks God, back to 2003, I start realizing we could not continue ignoring the threat of climate change, which was not that obvious then, because only some very experts were working on that.

At that stage I decided to change traditional patterns and already stated: We are going to help our customers to save energy.

Today that sounds perfectly crystal clear…. but again, that was 15 years ago… it was about challenging the traditional existing business model, the more you sell the best!

I felt very much alone, especially when having to explain to my colleagues (I was the only women in the top 1st 100 executives of the company) this tall story of repositioning our business from supplying gas into “designing and providing sustainable energy solutions”.

Since then many things happened. Actually, during the last decade 2000-2010, we all attended an in-depth transformation driven by 4 main forces:

The 1st one is the global awareness regarding climate change, that became perfectly clear after the famous Al Gore movie: An inconvenient trutg

The 2nd one is the set of regulation directly or indirectly related with climate change (post Kyoto agreements)

The 3d one is the shift in organizations driven by sustainability and more and more by CSR and finally the eco-crisis of 2008 that clearly defined 2 worlds: the growing one us in Europe or US where we need to improve what already exist.

I get more and more engaged in sustainability and realized that we could not continue to oppose profit and planet…. and that the only way was precisely to reconcile the different elements of the equation People, Planet, Profit… getting alignment between who I was, what did matter to me and something much bigger than us: the universe.

And, that’s why in 2011 I quit a nice, comfortable, well-paid and recognized position of managing director of a 1200 people company, 600 mlns € turnover… and start up from scratch a new company, that could turn these convictions into sustainable business.

That was a full reset! By the way half of my friends thought I was definitely crazy.

Economie d’Energie, that’s the name of my company was born, with the idea that there was a huge business to build a new world energy player paying attention to all the issues that might contribute to save energy and money.

In foreign countries, we named it ON5 Company, because we work on the 5th energy… the one we do not consume, that’s by far the less expensive one, and obviously the only one without any CO2 emission.

Today after 7 years we are close to 200 people, we closely work with leading companies to promote energy efficiency.

How does it work? Very simple. We just need to know 2 things.

- First of all in Europe every second house, meaning 100 millions houses, are overconsuming energy 6 to 9 time more than a house which would be built respecting current buildings standards. Once we know that we all turn into potential saving energy units. This is what we can call a market!

- The second thing is of course to go through all the questions we might have to take action.

How can I reduce my energy invoice? What kind of behaviors should I change? What kind of energy efficiency works should I decide? What to start with? Can I afford to do it? Who is going to make the works properly? Etc

My company is bringing answers to all these questions using new technologies … and step by step we build what I called a DEEESCo meaning a Digital Energy Energy Efficiency Environment Services and Solution Company that will turn into a new generation of Energy company fully customer centric.

By doing that, we already empowered 500.000 households who understood what to do and started taking actions to save money, preventing or fighting energy poverty, and obviously reducing C02 emissions. That will be enough? Not of course… but this is my bit, and “small streams make big rivers”

That’s why I am so convinced that we can all be part of the solution. Whoever we are : managers, entrepreneurs, startupers, whatever the size of our companies, or our engagement, politicians, NGO, students, teachers, researchers, simple citizens… Whatever our jobs, our passions, our political or religious ideas, origins, culture, we all can and probably should bring our bit.

The past 4 years were the warmest year ever. We are now already beyond a concentration of 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, and we all became witness of melting icebergs, fires, flooding, and more generally of climate change effects almost every single month now…

That’s only taking small and massive action, with determination, combining talents and cooperating that we will be able to build the post-carbon world, and conserve human life on Earth.

I know that I share with most of you here today that is above all a challenge of leadership.

We learnt from Einstein that we could not solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. That’s why I am glad to see your engagement and to be part of it. Thank you.

« Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us ; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. »

#Interventions