Avenir Commun Durable, true to its original mission, supports the Collège de France in its research activities. In 2024, following an ongoing call for projects, the initiative has decided to support three ambitious projects. One of these is entitled "Green innovation and energy transition: the role of economic and social players".
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. Today, there is a general consensus that human economic activities that emit greenhouse gases such as CO2 contribute to climate change. On this basis, some advocate that the best policy to combat climate change would be to decrease production and consumption. However, a policy of negative growth implies a fall in living standards and an increase in poverty, particularly in less developed countries. In fact, economic growth is necessary both to improve our quality of life and to enable the least developed countries to catch up with the most advanced. But how can we strike a balance between the imperative of economic growth and the urgent need to combat climate change?
The research program is based on the idea that, through innovation, it is possible to reconcile the objective of prosperity with that of tackling climate change. It therefore aims to understand the role of economic and social players in the process of energy transition to clean technologies, and how this process is affected by technological revolutions, particularly that of artificial intelligence. It also seeks to determine how business, the state and civil society can create conditions that encourage companies to reorient their production and innovation towards clean technologies, including nuclear. The ultimate aim is to find the optimum way of articulating different instruments – education and vocational training, career management, carbon pricing, border carbon tax, green innovation subsidies and green industrial policy, use of energy sources, consumer and shareholder social responsibility – to induce greener production and consumption methods of greener products.
The project is led by Philippe Aghion and Pierre-Michel Menger, both professors at the Collège de France.
The Avenir Commun Durable initiative is supported by the Collège de France Foundation, its patrons Faurecia and Saint-Gobain, and its major sponsors La Fondation Covéa and TotalEnergies.
