Energy Sufficiency

The project

This project explores how society can reduce energy consumption in absolute terms while maintaining quality of life. Moving beyond technical fixes, it brings social change into focus—examining how shifts in behavior, culture, and lifestyles can be integrated into energy modeling.

By reimagining how we live, move, and consume, the project highlights the transformative potential of sufficiency-based strategies. It offers new tools and insights for embedding social realities into climate and energy policies—paving the way for a more just, low-energy future.

Activities

The work is a continuation of the CLEVER project and aims at evaluating different energy consumption scenarios of at various levels:

• At the Belgian level, development of the Negawatt BE scenario
• At the EU Level, evaluation of the transition pathways towards net zero with efficiency and sufficiency measures.

In practice

The ISES research team is responsible for the modeling effort, which is carried out using the open-source PyPSA-EUR model, with hourly time resolution.

Budget, duration, and partners

Duration: From September 1st, 2024 to December 31st, 2026

Project partners:

• Negawatt Belgium
• University of Flensburg
• UCLouvain

Further information

References:

• Wiese, F., Taillard, N., Balembois, E., Best, B., Bourgeois, S., Campos, J., Cordroch, L., Djelali, M., Gabert, A., Jacob, A., Johnson, E., Meyer, S., Munkácsy, B., Pagliano, L., Quoilin, S., Roscetti, A., Thema, J., Thiran, P., Toledano, A., ... Marignac, Y. (19 October 2024). The key role of sufficiency for low demand-based carbon neutrality and energy security across Europe. Nature Communications, 15 (1), 9043. doi:10.1038/s41467-024-53393-0 https://hdl.handle.net/2268/324151
• Tareen, M. U., Laterre, A., Meyer, S., Thiran, P., Hernandez, A., & Quoilin, S. (2024). Modeling the impact of energy sufficiency on European integrated energy systems. In 37th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EFFICIENCY, COST, OPTIMIZATION, SIMULATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF ENERGY SYSTEMS. Rhodes, Greece: ECOS. doi:10.52202/077185-0116 https://hdl.handle.net/2268/321049

The video of the Negawatt BE scenario launch: