All starts with a good intention: in order to better inform citizens about the impact of their energy consumption, to cause if necessary a change in behavior and to avoid power cuts, the manager of the network of network Electricity transport (RTE) has set up a device called Ecowatt. The principle is simple – too perhaps -: an energy weather, which accounts in real time the level of electricity available in France.
Since the beginning of October, given an entry into the winter that is as close as possible as it worries, the main television channels (France TV and TF1 in mind) relay these cards in their bulletins d ‘Information, daily, as we follow the beaches weather in summer.
The color code used is also very simple, or even too simple: the regions are tinted with red when the electrical system becomes very tense and subject to cuts; orange when the system stretches and the use of ecogestes is strongly recommended; And finally, green, as currently, when we can all be content with a “normal consumption”.
The difficult use of “the tip” of consumption
This is precisely where the drama is played out! Because a “normal consumption”, average, without any particular change of habit, has actually leads us for years to the penal context in which we are today, but also to the ecological disaster that we barely touch.
Now, in the urgency of the current geopolitical crisis, it is every day, at all times and more in winter, whether it is soft or cold, day or night, sun or wind, that It is a question of lowering our consumption to reduce the use of modulating production-that is to say gas, directly or indirectly Russian, burned in thermal power plants, in France, in Germany or elsewhere, bought at prices goldening in debt our children.
Admittedly, the role of RTE is more to ensure the absence of cuts (at the “point” of consumption) than to the national interest in the broad sense. But giving a “green light” to energy consumption, focusing on the only passage of the “point” to which the orange and red lights are reserved, can even worsen the situation in the event of a persistent cold wave. Because to “pass the tip”, it will also be necessary to have enough gas stocks available at this time.
make the right gestures at the right time
What will happen if this gas was burned inconsiderely during periods of green light? “The simple is always false, what is not is unusable,” wrote Paul Valéry. To want to do very simple, RTE also chose to do very false. If we can understand the educational virtues of this color code on form, it is deplorable that on the merits, RTE does not benefit from this exceptional momentum, during which all eyes are turned towards this subject long relegated to the background of citizen concerns, to marry an educational mission of general interest.
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