Association négaWatt
- Promotion d'un système énergétique plus soutenable - Développement de scénarios de transition énergétique - Analyses sur les questions des matériaux et ressources - Analyses techniques et économiques sur les différentes politiques énergétiques mises en oeuvre en France et à l'échelle européenne.
ID: 368637932746-78
Lobbying Activity
Response to European Climate Law amendment
11 Sept 2025
négaWatt has been providing expertise on decarbonisation issues for twenty+ years, for France and more recently for Europe, including with the publication of the CLEVER scenario with a network of partners from civil society and academia across Europe in June 2023. CLEVER is based on the aggregation of national scenarios for 30 European countries. By exploring the national and EU energy savings potential through sufficiency and efficiency, it describes an ambitious yet realistic European decarbonisation trajectory, in a spirit of just transition and European solidarity. CLEVER achieves -92%GHG net emissions reductions in 2040. Our recent comparative analysis of the main European scenarios for 2040 including CLEVER and the Commission's own, which is attached to this feedback, shows that a 90% reduction target is achievable without external compensation or risky gambles, simply by strengthening energy savings and renewables. The analysis, which uses the ESABCC's work to benchmark ambition and feasibility, indeed finds that : - most existing scenarios show that -90% is achievable through different strategies, which all have in common energy efficiency, renewables and electrification - scenarios which chose energy savings have: the highest Paris-compatibility on GHG emissions reductions the highest contribution to Europes energy security the least feasibility concerns... ...and thus can bridge the gap between ambition and feasibility: applying only half of the ambition gap between CLEVER and the Commission's S3 (-90%) scenario on just a few energy savings indicators could enable the EU to save more than 500 TWh. This would enable fair and domestic GHG reductions, rather than investing in the transition outside Europe through international credits, or betting too much on risky carbon sinks. - all major EU scenarios cast a major role for electric renewables, with at least a threefold increase by 2040, while none foresees an increase in nuclear generation, and those which choose CCS technologies face high feasibility issues. These findings have just been reinforced by the negaWatt Belgium's scenario, based on an energy system-adequacy modeling for Belgium and its large neighbours, which finds that a strategy based on energy savings reduces costs by 22%, and electricity prices by 12% compared to one which rather bets on CCS and Direct Air Capture. As the continent with the fewest mineral resources, Europe can only find its true competitiveness and sovereignty in a strategy based on savings and a circular economy. We thus welcome the -90% target proposed by the European Commission in the Climate Law and call on Member States and the European Parliament to endorse this target, without international credits, and as a basis for: o the EU's NDC and a 2035 target o discussions on an ambitious post-2030 framework providing certainty to implementers of the transition, with energy savings and renewable energies at its core, rather than "technology neutrality", which could divest policies and attention towards technologies which may not deliver by 2040.
Read full responseMeeting with Alexandr Hobza (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné)
18 Jun 2025 · EU ambition for climate targets and scenario for 2040
Meeting with Héloïse Auplat (Cabinet of Commissioner Didier Reynders)
6 Dec 2023 · Presentation of the ‘CLEVER’ scenario (Collaborative Low Energy Vision for the European Region) and Négawatt’s findings and recommendations in the context of the discussion on the 2040 climate target
Response to Review report on the Governance Regulation of the Energy Union and Climate Action
28 Jul 2023
In spite of the adoption of the Fit for 55 package and 2030 targets, the energy crisis, and the acceleration of multiple environmental crises and challenges (from biodiversity to water and materials), as well as the upcoming debate around 2040 targets, a revision of the EU energy and climate governance regulation appears necessary. The adopted targets, particularly for renewable energy, are ambitious, and whether the legislation as agreed will be enough for the Union to collectively meet them remains to be seen. Much relies on Member States implementation, and the Unions governance should be a crucial means to not only monitor, but also steer that implementation and ensure that efforts keep the EU on track. Evidence from our recent scenario, a Collaborative Low Energy Vision for the European Region (CLEVER) suggests that current EU ambition on 2030 may fall short of setting the EU on its fair share of the remaining 1.5°C compatible carbon budget. CLEVER is more ambitious than the FF55 package on the demand side, with -18% final energy by 2030 compared to -11.7% in the EED. CLEVER is based on the sufficiency, efficiency and renewables framework and suggests that about half of the EUs final energy demand reduction potential towards 2050, which, at -55% compared to 2019, is in line with other major demand-focused global North transition scenarios, will come from sufficiency. This approach provides Europe with considerable benefits including a complete independence from all forms of energy imports and avoiding risky and costly options such as new nuclear and CCS. In light of the above, the revised Governance regulation should integrate a chapter on sufficiency. Sufficiency means redesigning collective and individual infrastructures and practices to minimise demand (energy, materials, land, water and other resources) while delivering human well-being for all within planetary boundaries. It differs from efficiency in that the reduction is based on prioritising and rescaling the level of services, while efficiency reduces the level of resources for a defined level of service. Sufficiency policies act as a critical complement to efficiency ones, ensuring their success by mitigating rebound effects and the risks of over-consumption (e.g. ensuring that more and larger cars driving longer distances on heavy lithium-batteries do not hinder the success of more efficient, eventually zero emissions cars). Integrating sufficiency as the sixth dimension of the Governance of the Energy Union would create a precedent for EU energy and climate policy and give the concept the attention it deserves, as a major lever next to efficiency : sufficiency could then be mainstreamed in all sectoral EU energy and climate policies, from cars (integrating size and weight) to buildings (integrating dwellings size in financing requirements) and products (addressing lifetime and size), including land take, agriculture (shifting to more sustainable diets) and materials (minimising rather than just diversifying). It would be integrated into Member States NECPs reporting and thus foster sufficiency policies at the national level, from which they remain very absent even more so when compared to recommendations from citizens assemblies as highlighted by a study from EnergieSuffizienz. It would thus very much increase the likelihood of reaching the 2030 targets and keeping Europe on track of the Paris agreement towards 2040 and neutrality, make it more resilient to increasing geopolitical risks and widely address multiple crises/challenges. Finally, CLEVER highlights that sufficiency can be a major equity enabler, smoothing the transition and thus easing its acceptance, by ensuring convergence between Member States consumption per capita towards 2050 (as well as within each Member state, among different social groups). The European Commission should therefore evaluate whether corridors of convergence could be integrated within the next EU governance.
Read full responseMeeting with Marie Toussaint (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)
28 Sept 2022 · gas - biomethane