Sustainability and systemic issues in the energy transition: the case of the bakery sector

The Observatoire de recherche montpellierrain de l'environnement (OREME) offers a series of short, multi-disciplinary lectures designed to raise awareness and encourage discussion on the issue of climate change. The "Petites Conférences de l'OREME" are open to the public and give a voice to environmental, earth and planetary sciences. On Thursday January 25, 2024, from 1pm to 2pm on the Triolet campus, the University of Montpellier will host the conference "Sustainability and systemic issues of the energy transition: the case of the bakery sector". It will be presented by Benjamin PILLOT, researcher at IRD's UMR ESPACE-DEV.

The conference in a nutshell

From the yellow vest movement to the war in Ukraine, tensions over the availability of energy services have continued to grow in recent years. Electricity tariffs have more than doubled between 2020 and 2022 in Europe, affecting a range of small-scale economic activities. Last January, for example, artisan bakers took to the streets to raise awareness of their soaring energy bills. The government's response to these systemic problems remains more or less the same, based primarily on subsidies and financial compensation. These measures demonstrate the gap that exists between the software used by political leaders and the reality of the socio-environmental challenges of our century, and which scientific literature has abundantly described. To better understand how to bridge this gap, in this conference we will detail the scientific, societal and science-society challenges of a sustainable energy transition. In particular, we'll look at what could represent a solution for the future of the bakery industry: solar baking.

Benjamin Pillot is a modeler and researcher at the Institut de Research pour le Développement (IRD, UMR Espace-DEV), specializing in socio-energetic systems. He works mainly on the development of energy transition scenarios through systems approaches linked to the Science of Sustainability. His research focuses on topics such as the evolution of energy systems in the context of climate change in West Africa, solar bakery and food autonomy thresholds on Reunion Island, and human mobility and intra-urban land use planning in Brazil.

Conference free of charge and without registration, subject to availability.