Give the example. The Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, regularly emphasizes the State’s duty to set an example in the quest for energy sobriety. By participating for the first time in the French Energy Savings Championship, called the Cube competition, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the public force is providing new proof of its commitment to sobriety.
Several public institutions, like the Paris Opera or the CROUS in Nantes, will challenge each other in this race to save energy within their real estate portfolio. The more than 500 buildings in the new “State” version of the Cube competition – operated by Cerema and A4MT – total nearly 1.7 million square meters. Throughout the competition, participating institutions benefit from monthly monitoring of the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of their buildings in order to position themselves in relation to “competitors” and note their own evolution. The competition, which starts this Tuesday, extends over a year.
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The spirit of emulation thus aroused has already proven itself for other types of buildings (schools, housing, offices, data centers, etc.) which already benefit from a dedicated Cube competition. The energy savings achieved in this context represent on average 15% of the energy consumption of the various buildings, and up to 30% in the case of the winners of the competition.
These results are obtained without any major work being carried out. Building users simply change their habits and adopt eco-friendly actions. For example, changing the temperature of offices, installing LED lighting or even unblocking heating circuits.
Competitors are supervised and advised by the championship operator, A4MT (Action for market transformation), whose main activity consists of implementing energy transition strategies within companies. “This program will demonstrate the essential contribution of the lever of uses, when correctly activated, to the environmental transition,” indicates the organizer.