Cities and Energy Transitions: issues, instruments, processes, and multidisciplinary prospective evaluation. The case of the Ile-de-France Region. – VITE !

The research project ETC (Energy Transitions and Cities) aims to shed light on the long-term stakes, the contents and the social, spatial and environmental consequences of energy transition strategies implemented in a major urban region, as well as the potential for the involvement of actors in these strategies. The project will focus in particular on the interdependent transformations of the built environment, urban infrastructures and social practices called for within these energy transition strategies.
Taking the Ile-de-France as a test bed, and based on the long-term energy policy orientations defined in regional strategic planning, the project ETC aims to explore the direct and indirect, intentional and non-intentional, favourable and unfavourable effects of the proposed strategies in terms of: resource, energy and pollutant flows; financial flows; the quality (nature, affordability) of the energy provided.
The project will be focused on the study of some of the main instruments, which local authorities can use within their energy transition strategies:
- new infrastructures for the supply of energy;
- new infrastructures and organization for the transport of people and goods;
- major urban projects (cf. the “Grand Paris” project that has recently been launched)
- energy renovation of buildings
A limited number of contrasted energy futures scenarios will be elaborated, in order to simulate the effects of the use of specific instruments within energy transition strategies. These simulations will be achieved by a model chain combining three models (land use, transport, air quality) which have already been validated for the study on the Ile-de-France region.
The sociospatial and environmental effects of the scenarios will be disaggregated in two complementary ways:
- according to different social groups (characterized by their income), in order to assess the socially-differentiated effects of scenarios in terms of energy expenditure, exposure to nuisances and energy poverty;
- according to different spatial contexts, in order to assess the spatially-differentiated effects of scenarios in terms of energy provision (price, diversity, reliability...), exposure to nuisances and the energy vulnerability of specific spaces.
This will also allow to examine local tensions emerging in relation to the implementation of a given energy strategy; the extent to which energy-related practices are questioned or destabilized; emerging forms of sociospatial inequalities or splintering in relation to energy; possible (and possibly desirable) forms of sociospatial differentiation of regional energy strategies.
The implementation of the project ETC will rest upon continuous and adequately designed interactions between qualitative and quantitative/modelling approaches as well as with frequent interactions with local governmental actors and bodies with whom long-lasting relationships have already been established. These interactions with local actors will ensure both the relevance of the energy scenarios studied in the project and the societal dissemination of the results of the research project.