Sufficiency is a serious game

If you’ve been following along with this podcast in the past months or more, you’ll know that we like to dig out local initiatives that might look small for now, but that can have a big impact in the future. For this episode, we picked one of them: the Economes, an awareness raising program on energy use – from citizens for citizens.

We meet Hugo and Julie who are both involved in it. Hugo Weisbecker is working for the French energy cooperative Enercoop. Julie Mayer is a cooperative member in her free time and researcher and assistant professor in her professional life.

In our conversation we set about defining the word “sufficiency” and why it matters so much. I started off with asking why it is so difficult most of us to change entrenched behaviors. Julie and Hugo do have a passionate and creative response to that. And: they convinced me that serious games are a fantastic way to change people’s mindset.

This episode was produced with support from SCCALE 20-30-50. SCCALE is an EU project (Horizon 2020 programme) which makes collaboration happen to get many more energy communities up and running. The people behind SCCALE203050 work on a methodology and toolkit for citizens, cities and policy makers. If you, too, want to see more local energy communities across Europe, check out the toolkit and explore all of the project’s resources at the website sccale203050.eu.