REASONS, societal debates in the age of renewable energies
- The REASONS (Renewable Energy Age: Social notices) industrial chair was created on April 4 on the campus of the University of Pau and the Pays de l’Adour (UPPA)¹.
- It brings together the Energy and environmental transitions laboratory at the UPPA, the CNRS and the Social Performance R&D project at TotalEnergies.
- The aim is to decipher debates on renewable energies on a global scale, in particular through social networks.
"REASONS is the first industrial chair in human and social sciences, dedicated to the energy and environmental transitions, validated and co-funded by the French National Research Agency," explains Souheir Shahine, Social Performance R&D Project Manager at TotalEnergies, the driving force behind this UPPA/CNRS/TotalEnergies collaboration on societal debates in the age of renewable energies. “Between 2018 and 2022, we accompanied the actions of the TEEN (Territories in the Energy and Environmental Transitions) chair created by the UPPA, the purpose of which was to rethink the role of companies and territorial stakeholders in the energy transition.” Today the Social Performance R&D project wants to take things a step further and investigate social networks as forums for debate and sharing information - whether true or not - on renewable energies. With this chair, our multi-energy company wants to understand how the different systems implemented to drive the energy transition are perceived by society and social stakeholders, to propose solutions that consider the population’s expectations. Eight technologies will be studied, starting with wind, agrivoltaic, lithium recovery and sustainable aviation fuels. "For each one, we will study the obstacles and development opportunities, and try to understand the processes which result in one technology being accepted rather than another. In the long run these studies should help us produce informative communication so that the complex challenges of the transition are made objective and understood," explains Marie-France Bénassy, Head of the R&D Safety, Environment, Sustainable Development program at TotalEnergies.
Social networks under scrutiny
Spearheaded by Xavier-Arnaud de Sartre, Director of Research at the CNRS and Director of the Energy and Environmental Transitions laboratory at the UPPA, the REASONS chair will include two PhD students and two post-doctoral researchers to conduct the study internationally. It will analyze in particular the position of social organizations as regards renewable energies. How do they attack companies that make empty promises or practice greenwashing? And how are debates structured, in particular on social networks, which have become a major forum for expressing opinions. In France, China, Australia, Venezuela, Senegal, etc. A global tour of social networks that should help us understand how the technologies of the energy transition are perceived, and how the way the solutions are presented make them "accepted and acceptable", and meet the expectations of citizens as best as possible.
Alongside this scientific study, the REASONS chair aims to make science more accessible. As part of the label “Science with and for society” (SPAS) awarded to the UPPA, it will create a comic strip on the deployment of renewable energies. Watch this space!
From left to right: Christine Bouisset, Deputy Director of the TREE laboratory (CNRS/UPPA), Ilias Iliopoulos, President of the Industrial Chairs committee (ANR), Marie-France Bénassy, Head of the R&D Safety, Environment, Sustainable Development program (TotalEnergies), Christophe Derail, Vice-President Partnerships & Innovation (UPPA), representing the President Laurent Bordes, Younis Hermès, Aquitaine Regional Delegate (CNRS), Xavier Arnauld de Sartre, Director of the TREE laboratory (CNRS/UPPA).
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[1] The University of Pau and the Pays de l'Adour (UPPA), with over 13,000 students on 5 campuses, is one of 17 French universities to have been awarded the IDEX or I-SITE (Initiative Science-Innovation-Territoires-Économie) label of excellence by the French government, which will be extended until 2022. The I-SITE E2S, Solutions pour l'Énergie et l'Environnement, supported by the UPPA, INRAE, Inria and CNRS consortium, is a strong mark of the excellence of its research and the intensity of its collaborations with the economic world.