Energy: What if raises were a good thing?
Florent Favier, our expert in ecological transition has decided to shake up a received idea. What if energy increases were a good thing: when lots of people are struggling to pay their gas or electricity bills isn’t that a bit of a provocation?
The end of abundance?
Florent Favier asked himself the question on the basis that we had in any case entered a period of “end of abundance”.
Our Chairman has in fact recognized that we are entering a period when raw materials are going to become rarer. And in the market economy, what is rare is expensive.
From this finding, Florent Favier drew two thoughts
The first is that living in abundance is comfortable, but not essential. On the contrary, it is counter-productive since, for example, energy or water is abundant and cheap and encourages waste.
So the increase in the price of energy will undoubtedly lead us to consider the value of these resources with more consideration. The change is also brutal for many and deeply unfair. The richest will only be moderately affected, while the most modest will be harmed.
The second reflection is that the decay we are undergoing.
In a market economy, decline would be the source of as many evils as growth would be the source of virtues. But this is because it imposes the consequences of a collapse of resources on the less favored social categories without anticipation.
The theory of a chosen decrease, brilliantly supported by the young economist Timothée Parrique. It demonstrates that by applying economic sectors, we enter a more virtuous circle for planetary resources as well as for humans.
A lasting crisis
We know that the maximum oil extraction has already been reached, the stocks are only decreasing. We estimate the lifetime of their reserves at around fifty years, roughly like gas, and around a hundred for uranium and coal.
We are therefore necessarily moving towards a contraction of major energy resources, which have been interpreted as abundant up to now.