Will businesses have to reduce their energy consumption by 10%?

Carole Ferry, edited by Alexis Rey-Millet 12:29 p.m., July 08, 2022

Faced with the energy crisis, and in anticipation of the risk of shortages next winter, the government has set the objective of reducing consumption in France by 10% within 2 years.

With this in mind, the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher received representatives of establishments open to the public and large surfaces on Thursday, to see with them what efforts could be made.

Concretely, the government hopes to identify how stores, restaurants, supermarkets or even concert halls can, on their scale, lower their gas and electricity consumption.

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"Significant leeway"

First objective: better enforce existing rules, such as the obligation to turn off the lighted shop windows from 1 a.m.

But it is possible to go even further, explains the general delegate of the Federation of Commerce and Distribution, Jacques Creyssel: "We are working to see how to reduce the temperature in stores. From 20 degrees at 19 degrees, see if we can go lower. To make sure that we can dim the lights in the evening, but also at certain times of the day. In shopping centers, how to reduce the overall lighting..."

"On all these subjects, we can clearly see that there is significant room for maneuver which should allow us to go in the direction of the efforts requested by the government", explains Jacques Creyssel at the microphone of Europe 1. 

For this project, the schedule should pass very quickly, since the sector intends to work on these objectives all summer.

We then expect several announcements in the fall.