Sobriety. The word is on everyone’s lips at the end of 2022. Brandished by scientists as well as a large part of political leaders or NGOs. An ultimate remedy, a universal response to the various ills that society encounters: energy crisis, climate crisis, scarcity of resources, destruction of biodiversity. Consume less and consume better, to avoid collapse. But is this refrain soluble in capitalism, the accumulation of goods and the search for profit that it presupposes? And if so, how do you get there?
It is this thorny question which was posed to about twenty CEOs of large French groups by the Boston Consulting Group, in a study which appears this Saturday, December 3 and of which the Express was able to consult the conclusions exclusively. “The idea was to understand how companies can continue to develop, to provide services for society, in this changing context”, specifies Marie Humblot Ferrero, associate director of BCG.
This environment, precisely, is that of the Anthropocene, of a mode of consumption specific to Man which has already led to the overcoming of 6 of the 9 planetary limits, each of them (loss of biodiversity, change of land use, water cycle, plastic pollution) with potential systemic impacts on the preservation of life. If the CEOs interviewed, including heavyweights such as those of Aéroports de Paris, Dalkia, Bouygues Construction, Michelin, Dassault Systèmes, Pernod Ricard, Eramet or Saint-Gobain, did not discover the subject in 2022, the Covid and then the war in Ukraine was a powerful catalyst for awareness. “For two years, companies have been facing unprecedented upheavals in their supply chain, access to resources – physical or human – which impact the products and services they sell”, notes Marie Humblot Ferrero.
The call of the IPCC
The call for frugality is welcome and a priori in line with the speeches of the IPCC. In its last report and for the first time, the UN group of experts on the climate devoted an entire chapter to sobriety, defining it as “a set of measures and daily practices that make it possible to avoid the demand for energy, of materials, land and water while ensuring the well-being of all human beings within the limits of the planet”. The fact remains that at the limits of companies, the question of sobriety is often mistakenly confused with that of energy efficiency or optimization, even if they are close. These allow you to consume fewer resources for the same product or service sold. We also understand this interpretation quite well, which ultimately allows a company to lower its costs for an equivalent turnover. Sobriety in its more radical sense – drop in air traffic for Aéroport de Paris, tire production at Michelin, sales of spirits for Pernod Ricard – is still struggling to find a clear path in the mouths of leaders.
Including within the BCG study, where the French leaders questioned obviously do not have the same perception of the subject. Christel Bories, the general manager of the Eramet mining group at the heart of the energy transition, for example, defends the need “to focus on what is essential in order to try to take as little as possible from the planet’s resources and preserve them as best as possible”. “Sobriety means: ‘nothing too much’, that is to say the most efficient possible use of resources and the search for savings to achieve its objectives”, points out for his part Augustin de Romanet, CEO of the group. ADP, quoted in the study. Consume better therefore, but not necessarily less in absolute terms. Marie Humblot Ferrero, from BCG adds her own definition: in her view, sobriety constitutes “an approach which aims to reduce the impact that companies can have on the resources they use in general. idea of rethinking and optimizing the use of the resource, and downstream, of pushing different, more responsible and reasonable modes of consumption”.
From competitive advantages to sobriety
Defining sobriety, therefore a first puzzle. Fortunately, according to the expert, the question of transformation is no longer debated – “they are all working on it at different levels of maturity”, she notes. Companies obviously have an interest in this. A warming of 3 degrees compared to 2015, would cause damage amounting to up to 30,000 billion dollars from which they would obviously not be spared, warns the BCG in its study. Society as a whole encourages French companies to get involved in the fight for the environment. Moreover, according to the firm, this sobriety can lead to significant competitive advantages – reducing costs and gaining resilience, obtaining better access to financing, attracting young profiles attentive to these subjects, printing a brand image in line with the consumer expectations.
However, today’s leaders are obsessed with the question of the pace of this transition. “The companies we interviewed are global, they are in a competitive environment with American or Chinese companies that have other aspirations or constraints. The speed of transformation must take this battle into account, otherwise it will create an imbalance that is too strong and to put themselves out of the competitive game”, analyzes Marie Humblot Ferrero. Many of them are worried and are also calling for harmonized regulations on a global scale, to avoid distortions of competition. The debates on the Inflation Reduction Act, a text with more than protectionist accents recently adopted by the government of Joe Biden in the United States, will not reassure them.
Site more difficult than digital
The work to carry out the transformation is immense. Even more difficult than the digital wave that appeared in the early 2000s. see the result. You also have to be agile because a good part of the technologies that will make it possible to transform companies are not mature or simply do not exist yet”, adds the associate director of BCG.
Although they have more capital to carry out the transformation successfully than SMEs and ETIs, the large groups also have the defect of their qualities, namely a considerable number of subsidiaries, subcontractors and factories that must be able to train in the same movement and at the right pace. To see more clearly, the BCG nevertheless proposes four priority areas: reducing the footprint on resources as well as the negative externalities of the company (green energies, limitation of employee travel, hunting for waste), optimizing the value proposition by eliminating what is superfluous for the customer (increase the durability of products, eliminate those that are harmful to the environment), implement sustainable production methods (eco-design, relocation of production) and invent consumption models and sober and durable use.
Of course, companies alone will not be able to turn the tables. In its study, the BCG calls for an overhaul of economic measurement models such as GDP, because the latter evaluate the creation of wealth or the consumption of resources without taking into account the negative externalities on the environment. “Our financial analysis models and accounting standards do not sufficiently take into account extra-financial elements. The lack of attention paid to environmental parameters in particular, which nevertheless carry risks and opportunities that can be translated into financial impacts, biases the calculation of the profitability of a project and therefore the arbitration and financing decisions”, indicates the consulting firm.