PACT, Pathways for Carbon Transitions
PACT stands for “Pathways for Carbon Transitions”. It is a collaborative project submitted and approved by the 7th European Framework Programme. PACT is coordinated by ENERDATA (www.enerdata.fr) and involves participants from industry, universities and research centres.
The PACT project aims at shaping what a sustainable post-carbon society would look like and how we could reach it within the next 50 years. It will focus first on what shape the energy demand, and how this should evolve towards post-carbon concept, from two viewpoints: that of the infrastructures, in relation to urbanisation and land-use schemes, and that of the life-styles and behaviours, in relation to the technologies that should be available. It will then deepen the question of urbanisation and land-use from the renewable energy perspective, including that of the systems (centralised/dependence versus decentralised/autonomous). Last, PACT will investigate the role of social forces, actors, stakeholders in the transition process toward this post-carbon concept. The ultimate objective of the project is to complement these analytical components with an attempt to quantify scenarios of post-carbon societies, at the world level. See details on http://www.pact-carbon-transition.org
The PACT project contributes to the SOVAMAT initiative which has ambition to conduct its own research agenda by bringing together different projects responding to various Calls of the FP7 program.
The CIRAIG international Chair on LCA
The International Chair in LCA is a research unit of the CIRAIG (Interuniversity Research Centre for the Life Cycle of Products, Processes and Services, www.chaireacv.org) and gathers industrial and commercial partners which collaborate in the framework of case-studies related to the major aspects of Life Cycle Assessment. CIRAIG has already provided many contributions in the fields of LCA and LCIA.
The ECERPE project
ECERPE : Eco conception : Enjeux, Représentations et Pratiques en PME
Eco design: Stakes, Representations and Practices in SME
The ECERPE project, financed by the French ADEME agency, is led by the École des Mines of Nantes through its departments “Social Sciences and Management” and “Systems Energy and Environment”. It aims at feeding the thinking currently led at the European level on sustainability assessment of technologies. We wish to contribute to this reflection by opening a methodology which does not reduce sustainability to quantitative assessment tools.
Taking into account sustainable development seems now impossible to circumvent by the companies. Beyond the speeches, we are interested in the way in which the companies decline, within the organization of their work, the actions in favour of this development. Eco-design is an essential field of study to determine the efforts but also the difficulties of the companies when they take this route.
Based on real SME’s study cases, the ECERPE project addresses issues such as:
- the producers’ own representation of sustainable products or services,
- how they build the figures of their customers (social identities, expectations, pathways to the act of buying…),
- how they integrate these figures and the representation of sustainable development.
Contact : sarah.ghaffari@emn.fr
