On June 12th 2024, FULFILL held a session as part of the European Sustainable Energy Week! In the biggest room of the European Commission, the session had a total of 1003 participants in-person and online.
Titled “Less is more? An overview of sufficiency policies to reduce emissions and increase quality of life”, the 2-hour session focused on the new research of the FULFILL project, which analyses 9500 surveys, 50 citizen initiatives, 16 policies, and 3 workshops in order to show how sufficiency policies can reduce emissions and increase well-being. The session covered results, impact quantification, National Energy and Climate Plan recommendations, and political commentary.
Check out the official session page on the EUSEW website
Watch the video replay of the session here!
Check out the PDF presentation here.
The session was kicked off with an introduction to sufficiency, its importance in the green transition, and its rising recognition in energy policy (such as in the latest IPCC report), by session moderator Fiona Breucker, Research Fellow in Energy Policy at the Jacques Delors Institute.
It was then followed by presentations on survey results showing how sufficient Europeans are willing to be, sufficiency on the ground, and FULFILL policy recommendation results from the panel of experts, including:
- Elisabeth Dütschke, Head of Actors and Social Acceptance in the Transformation of the Energy System at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI
- Sergio Olivero, Head of Business and Finance Innovation at ReSCOOP, CONCERTI, Energy Center of the Politecnico di Torino
- Yves Marignac, Energy expert and spokesperson at the Association négaWatt
- Matteo Giacomo Prina, Senior Researcher at EURAC research
Next, the second half of the panel of experts took the floor to discuss bringing sufficiency to the wider European policy level, and more specifically how the EU’s climate plans can begin to include sufficiency. Participants heard from:
- Yves Marignac, Energy expert and spokesperson at the Association négaWatt
- Gunnar Boye Olesen, Coordinator at INFORSE-Europe
- Frank Siebern-Thomas, Head of Unit at the Fair Green and Digital Transitions Research Unit of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL)
- Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, Member of the European Parliament
Finally, the session concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Fiona Breucker. Throughout the entirety of the session, the audience was asked to participate via Slido, where they answered questions on sufficiency statistics and citizen ideas of sufficiency around Europe. At the very end of the session, they were given the opportunity to ask direct questions to the panel, including about the involvement of citizens in the sufficiency movement.
Overall, the event was a great success and gave a lot of visibility both to the FULFILL project and to #sufficiency in Europe!
