OCCUPATIONS AND ENERGY TRANSITION
The industrialization of green building system: trades and emerging professional activities.
Daniele DI NUNZIO (IRES/ISF/ Bruno Trentin Association)
Emanuele GALOSSI (IRES/ISF/ Bruno Trentin Association)
Serena RUGIERO (IRES/ISF/ Bruno Trentin Association)
Transition towards a green economy led to a transformation of the organizational models of the production as well as of the traditional occupations. Sustainable technological innovation enriches the work of new meanings and new contents claiming for an adaptation of the workers’ skills and continuous changes in the knowledge and in the working practices.
In particular, processes facing the environmental issues led to some important changes: at one hand, a companies’ growing demand for specialized jobs with the need for a constant updating of the workers’ skills required; on the other hand, the need to cross the rigid thresholds of the technical-specialist boundaries to assume values and sensibilities of a more systemic and transversal character starting from the environmental one.
In the present paper we analyze the changing boundaries between “new” and “traditional” professions in the green-building with the aim to highlight the reconfiguring skills and tasks. We presents the main findings of a research project on the industrialized green-building system based on case-studies. The green-building led to a new relation between the factory and the construction site, craftsmanship and industrial production, with an impact on all professional fields.
KEY WORDS: energy transition, green building, innovation, green jobs, sustainable development.
Construction professionals facing the energy efficiency challenge: knowledges, competences and practices’ recombining at stake.
Géraldine MOLINA (docteur en Géographie, Aménagement de l’espace – Urbanisme ; post-doctorante à École Centrale de Nantes /IRSTV CNRS 2488))
Marjorie MUSY (ENSA/CERMA ; École Centrale de Nantes/IRSTV).
The aim of our contribution is to explore the concrete production of the energy efficiency at the building’s scale. It crosses researches issues from sociology of energy, sociology of the professions and sociology of work. We propose to question how the professionals that contribute to a building construction concretely deal with the challenge of energy transition and try to integrate it in their professional practices. The renewal of knowledge logics and professional know-how, the learning dynamic are called into question: which are the problems, the bolts they have to cope with? Which resources do they mobilize to make their competences progress and to combine this new strong requirement with the other challenges induced by the production of buildings? How the energy performance injunction contributes to restructure professional territories (professions that are traditionally present, arrival of new actors, etc.)? Which interprofessional dynamics (as competition and co-operation) can be observed between these actors? How the point of view of the inhabitants, their lifestyles and their energy uses are integrated by construction professionals that take part in the buildings’ production and management.
We’ll try to bring some answers by presenting some results of an exploratory investigation conducted in France over a panel of “innovating”, “pionniers”, “exemplary” professionals in energy performance (it means identified as such by their fellow-members and the other professionals with whom they work) and who belong to various links of the chain of the actors that intervene in buildings’ production and management (project ownership, architects, project management, tradesmen, maintenance technicians, etc). The analysis of their trajectories and individual approaches, their reflexive returns on their production, and their positioning strategies will be put in perspective with the results of other recent investigations conducted with “ordinary” professionals. At the end, the analysis will try to deliver a comprehensive knowledge of working situations and effective pressures, to identify the pionniers’ features and the factors that can facilitate the evolution of professional competences so that they can integrate the lifestyle’s concern in the their work applied to energy performance.
KEY WORDS: work situations, interprofessional dynamics, professional unease, multicriterion approach, resources.
Dependence, independence and interdependence: a socio-agronomic approach of the commitment of organic farmers in the energy transition.
Sabine GIRARD (IRSTEA Grenoble/UR Développement des Territoires de Montagne)
Hugues VERNIER (Communauté de communes du Val de Drôme/Biovallée)
The development of organic farming appears in numerous forecast scenarios as a key factor of the energy transition because of the non-use of chemical fertilizers, but also with regard to the evolution of the relations between farming, nature and society which it can lead to. Such a transition supposes the evolution of the practices of the farmers and more generally of the actors of the agri-food systems. However, the conditions and the processes of such changes are little studied while this knowledge is required to design public policies.
This exploratory study aims a better understanding of the evolution of the farmers’ practices concerning energy management in organic farming systems: how happens the change and for which reasons? Multiple trajectories and a diversity of reasons lead to the conversion to organic farming. It can be just an adjustment of the production practices or it can be lived as a radical change in the activity, the job or the lifestyle of the farmer. What about the management of energy in a context of increasing order of energy transition?
The study aims to analyze the multiple justifications of famers’ practices regarding energy management and the diversity of trajectories and factors of the evolution of these practices. It aims also to characterize the tensions and the complementarities between the farmers’ commitments both in organic farming and in energy transition. Twenty deep interviews were led with organic farmers localized in Vallée de la Drôme/ Biovallée, concerning their personal motivations, the systems of practices within the farm and their evolutions, the relations with the sectors and the territory.
The analysis of the results is in progress. The objective of this paper is to discuss the interest and the relevance of the notions of dependence, independence and interdependence to better understand the processes and the conditions of the evolution of agricultural practices on energy. This key for reading allows to explore the articulations between spaces and scales of energy management by the farmers. It allows to understand the way the farmers perceive the energy stake in a set of other stakes, among which those economic, identical, ecological. It also allows to analyze the practices and perceptions of the farmers on energy through the wider prism of the evolution of the relationships between farming, society and environment.
KEY WORDS: energy, organic farming, perception, practice, autonomy.
INTERMEDIATE PROFESSIONAL ACTORS
The construction of high-performance building: What organizational changes for social housing organisations?
Farid ABACHY (Social Union for Housing)
Since Palulos to recent legislation (Grenelle Environment, law project on energy transition), subject to successive obligations relative to thermal regulations and in integrating approaches conducted in the framework of the policies of the city (DSQ, HVS, PNRU …) the social housing organisations led rehabilitation operations of their heritage, aimed to a significant improvement in energy and environmental performance.
However, the establishment of the “high performance building” was partly sustained by the social housing organisations, to the extent that changes in performance was called by that regulation (lowering successive of energy consumption maximum permitted), and no meet the needs and expectations of tenants – though at the same time, social housing organisations have engaged in leasehold cost control measures and energy consumption, having noted the increasing difficulties of tenants to pay for their bill.
If this regulatory and economic input was initially impacted the project ownership work (for formulating levels and requirements of performance to achieve and by defining new relationships with the other actors of the building), it has extended gradually to other jobs (heritage management, rental management and social management), in particular by:
- The selection of equipment to be installed, whose the expansion and increasing complexity required a growing competence by of employees and a reconfiguration of the maintenance requirements for the achievement of expected returns and maintaining ;
- The definition of services to be included in a social rental offer and the modalities of their control;
- The gradual taking in account of the square of the tenants (actions of accompanying and awareness to control energy demand devices).
This contribution propose to account for construction terms of the category “buildings of high energy performance and low consumption” in social housing, through the analysis of relations between actors (internal services, external stakeholders, tenant groups …) of their respective positioning, of the developments of skills and organizational configurations in place within the social housing organisations for the realization of experimental projects (passive buildings, positive energy buildings, carbon imprint …) at light of future goals and an expected regulatory, social and societal (“responsible building” 2020 …).
KEY WORDS: social housing, energy performance, consumption management, organisations, businesses.
Auxiliary of the energy market, an approach by two professional groups energy saving advice.
Joseph CACCIARI (University Aix-Marseille / LAMES)
The planed communication will deal with new mechanisms that have been created in order to make people, namely families, take an active part in the « energy transition » as regards the consumption of domestic energy. One main question raised involves the interests of the historical actors of the energy market, which are foremost the enterprises. Indeed, the energy transition may be described as an increase of non-carbon energy sources and a reduction in the volumes consumed. On the other hand, the same actors take advantage of a consistent price increase and of the State warranties on their production. Hence, their benefits are garantueed in a double way. They loose on one side, but win on the other, which makes them accept the decrease of energy consumption. The families on their part see their electric power bill increase or at least stay at the same level although they consume less. The French State aims at making them lessen their energy consumption, at making them change their habits, otherwise, the energy production might not be sufficient and break down. In order to increase the people’s consent, the actors of energy market and the French State implement certain mechanisms which shall be described in this article. In order to examine these mechanisms, I chose to compare two auxiliary groups of energy market wich support families with advice about energy saving and thermal renovations : the Conseiller info énergie and the Médiateur sociaux en énergie. The first of those actors work in the bosom of the French State, via the Agence de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie. They address to middle-class families and better-off segments of society. The later are involved with the working classes or populations under regular social assistance. They are employees of organizations partly funded by historical industrial sector energy. These two groups may be described as “commercial” in the sense that they are trying to increase the household willingness to engage thermal renovation of housing or to pay ever higher bills despite an eventual decline in consumption. These commercials take volens nolens part in a delegated public action on solvency of customers and the commercial management of ongoing changes in the energy market. The originality of this comparison is to highlight the division of labor between the government and industrals groups in the framework of the energy consumption at the age of energy transition. We will show against a firmly view that the French government supports families without obvious problems, while industrial investment in people considered to have serious social problems or at risk. My argument will be based primarily on materials taken from direct observation of the work of these professional groups.
KEY WORDS : energy, consumption, professional groups, consent, energy market.
Between logical design and occupation: “intermediate actors” of performing commercial buildings.
Sarah THIRIOT (University of Grenoble/PACTE ; EDF/R&D/GRETS)
French office buildings are targeted by a set of policy tools (thermal regulation, energy performance contracting, green lease) to help reduce energy consumption. These tools generate complex mutations that affect investors and professionals from building construction as well as occupants. Given the difficulties in achieving the goals of energy efficiency, operational actors (Real Estate Company, project manager, contractors, etc.) seek to develop their skills and organization of real estate projects during phases of design and of construction. But about occupancy, and its overconsumption of energy, it is the commonly-held figure of “occupant” which is answered as a factor of unpredictability and irrational disruption facing the technical approach of the building.
Using the notion of “intermediary actors”, this communication proposes to highlight the professionals involved in occupancy of office building: it is the case of technical managers who perform maintenance and space planners. These two kind of works, are not institutionalized in the organizational structure of design. However, these works deeply shape the daily working environment of the occupants (adjustment of heating and ventilation for instance). Changes in favor of actual performance (CPE) and certifications about efficiency during occupancy (BREEAM-In-Use, HQE Exploitation) also seem to advocate for a revaluation of these occupational groups.
Behind the issues normally studied through the prism of occupants, such as comfort, the paper shows the importance of making a shift to an organizational approach of the energy efficiency project thanks to these little studied professionals. They fully appear as intermediate actors at the interface between different logics of users of the building (builder, architect, real estate company, occupant) and different organizational logic (design, use), which may be in tension. This perspective opens a way to understand the issues that these activities pose to the achievement of a real performance and to the way for occupants to live in energy efficient office buildings.
This work is based on a qualitative study of several office buildings (observations and interviews). It provides an analysis of the links between design, maintenance and occupation in understanding the occupation of an energy efficient building.
KEY WORDS :Energy efficiency, office building, division of work, intermediate players.