Strategic and organizational challenges of the energy transition

Presentation of the interviewee : Julie Mayer joined i3-CRG as a six-month postdoctoral fellow, after completing her thesis at Paris-Dauphine University at the end of 2017, on risk awareness management. She wanted to begin research into the organizational and strategic issues related to the energy transition. Several projects are underway and others have been launched around the managerial issues at the heart of this transition, at different levels (the energy sector, the strategies of institutional actors (firms, public authorities, and others), the behavior of individual actors). Finally, a thematic working group was launched to discuss research projects related to the management of the energy transition.

What project are you currently working on?

I am currently working with Élodie Gigout and Hervé Dumez on the controversies related to the development of self-consumption of electricity. At the level of neighborhoods, buildings, and individual homes, it is becoming possible to consume the electrical energy that one produces, for example using photovoltaic panels. The movement is part of an overall trend in society and the economy moving towards short circuits: we can talk about “garden electricity”. But multiple tensions are emerging, between the quest for institutional consensus and the divergences of interests of the economic players in the sector. How can these tensions be managed? To answer this question, we are conducting a series of interviews with key players in the electricity sector (producers, distributors, regulators, consumers, etc.), and analyzing the documentation published on the subject. The aim is both to identify and typify the tensions and to identify their management methods.

What developments do you see for this project? 

Ultimately, our ambition is to build and carry out a research agenda around the managerial issues of the energy transition. Although these are numerous, management sciences have so far taken little hold of them. However, the energy transition constitutes an empirical context capable of enriching existing theories. At the same time, it is necessary to establish a dialogue between two worlds, that of the engineer and that of the manager: in this, the CRG constitutes the ideal place to develop this research theme.

Interview by Marie Claude Cléon