In the first episode of our great story on Jean-Marc Jancovici, the polytechnician engineer dreamed of cinema with Luc Besson in particular, and learned from Nicolas Hulot how to convince and make himself heard.
The devil with a long spoon
In 2007, with the polytechnician Alain Grandjean, he created his consulting company, Carbone 4, “4 because we have to divide carbon emissions by four”, explains his partner, friendly and talkative. This sells to companies, public administrations, the calculation of their carbon footprint and support in the decarbonization of their activities. Huge success. A third thief joins the case, with 40% of the shares: Laurent Morel, former financial director of an industrial vehicle rental company, at the head of Klépierre, a huge developer of shopping centers. Three years later, the three – Jancovici, Grandjean and Morel – launched The Shift Project, a “laboratory of ideas intended to inform and influence the debate on the energy transition”, now the most influential, the most popular and the most followed on the networks of French think tanks. Among its supporters, for a third of the budget, EDF, Bouygues, Vinci, Veolia. Companies which, like two-thirds of the CAC 40, are also Carbone 4 clients. Proximity defended by Alain Grandjean: “We need to make big changes in overall economic reasoning. Planetary limits force us to think about the economic differently.” And this by all the channels, voluntary or lucrative. Carbon 4 thrives. Customers jostle. A hundred consultants hired, a turnover exceeding 10 million euros. “I chose to eat with the devil with a long fork”, stings Janco titillated on his activities as a consultant in the service of big polluters. And besides, how can you blame it for converting these polluters, for helping them to decarbonise? Isn’t this precisely where the transition must be made? It was at this time that the Ecole des Mines Paris-Tech had the good idea to entrust him with a course for first-year students. His videos, poorly framed, quavering, are a hit. Twenty hours in all, ten two-hour blocks. A haste from Janco: jokes, comparisons that hit home, like when he converts the kilowatt hour of energy into a slave equivalent. The sessions go around the engineering schools, they are learned by heart, mimed, recited, and among the students of the Grandes Ecoles, he becomes a guru reluctantly. To listen to it is to address the climate emergency against the current of ecological doxa, with rational foundations, the corpus of physics, hard science, it is innovative, elitist, reasoned. The contagious wave thrives quietly. It now affects future decision-makers in our industry. Smart.
The nuclear, a ventral parachute
Patatras, Fukushima, 2015. A catalyst for the ardent support of nuclear power? Not at all. Fukushima is not serious to hear it, the tsunami killed, but the nuclear lasted, it remains safe, clean, a “ventral parachute” which the planet could not do without if it wants to avoid the crash. Having a grain of truth against the majority opinion is pleasing. This time the Janco rocket is flying. 2019, Nicolas Hulot slams the door of his ministry, California goes up in smoke, the IPCC warns that if we do not hold the 1.5 degree of global warming, our planet is threatened in the short term and here he is assuring to know how we get out of trouble. He entered the High Council for the Climate, arousing the anonymous ire of astonished experts in the columns of Le Monde: “The five women on the panel were chosen for their academic expertise, unlike some men, consultants of whom we can s ‘ask about the criteria for appointment.’ In the viewfinder, him and Alain Grandjean. We tear him away, he gets annoyed. On November 8, 2019, guest of Guillaume Erner on France Culture. The day before, the production warned him that it will be above all a question of nuclear power, but he arrives, face closed, and says he has no desire to talk about nuclear power. In a bad mood, he scolds, he admonishes, and leaves the radio station without smiling. “I thought I would receive an adviser from Nicolas Hulot, I invited a sect guru”, notes the following days the journalist, faced with a surge of criticism on the networks. Erner will shortly after receive an invitation from the physicist to come and take part in the Combloux seminars. Companies buy conferences from him (invoiced around 4,000 to 5,000 euros, last known price dating from 2019), a box, groups of chilled CSR directors, drinking in the words of the talented chatbot. And too bad, if his multiple activities – those of his company, those of his think tank, that of lecturer – collide. Surprisingly Janco, capable during a congress dedicated to renewable energies, of closing the beak to his neighbour, a supporter of wind power, ignoring the fact that the latter, at the head of a huge agrifood player, is also at the same time a big client of Carbone 4. He doesn’t care, he has to talk to everyone, speed up.
That same year, advisers to Emmanuel Macron gave him an appointment at the Elysée. The interview, long, goes well, but he complains. He must meet the President of the Republic and the latter must listen to him “two to three hours”, he explains, because his system is a loopy, perfect coherence, impossible to shorten, to subtract, no, really he three hours must be cleared from the presidential diary. The lecture will not take place. When last May, ten days after his re-election, Emmanuel Macron, anxious to stage his desire for “ecological planning” gathered around him a dozen climate experts (including Jean Jouzel, climatologist, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-president of group n° 1 of the Giec, Corinne Le Quéré, president of the High Council for the climate, professor Hervé Le Treut…), tumbles into the august palace, wearing crumpled jeans, a blue T-shirt and a backpack gray on the shoulders, Jancovici. A schoolboy joke? Surely not, her outfit is not staged. Moreover, when this fall, he is invited to speak by the board of directors of LVMH, he comes in a polo shirt, hair wandering. In front of all the children of Bernard Arnault, CEO of the group and first fortune in the world, taking notes, a notebook on his knees, facing the studious areopagus made up of the bosses of the luxury brands, the directors of the empire, he speaks a hour. (Here, he agrees to do less time than for President Macron). The conference, monastic silence, over, they are pale these leaders of champagne houses, perfumes, haute couture, murmuring, shaken: “We’re screwed, everything is screwed.” A few days later, they will receive the comic strip, Le Monde sans fin. Sound reading to drive the point home, a gift from Dargaud, to whom Yann Arthus-Bertrand suggested the idea.
The scarecrow of 550,000 wind turbines
Jean-Marc Jancovici is convinced that he was right before everyone else and against everyone else, and recent events – Russian gas, energy sovereignty, relaunching of nuclear power – hone his iron conviction. The man who defends nuclear power for more than twenty years finds his demonstrations confirmed and it is an understatement to say that his “hubris” (the expression is from someone close to the President of the Republic) has not lost weight. At the same time, his troops of fans defend him with virulence on the networks, basing en masse on anyone who dares to criticize, even if it is founded. Forbidden to touch their master. It is also possible that these admirers are unaware that he does not run his Facebook page or his Twitter account, leaving them to the goodwill of unpaid volunteers. The only media he deals with is LinkedIn, and you have to read it there. Hitting, piquant, blackening pages and pages to refute the most obscure article of the confidential press, challenging Macron or apostrophizing Borne. An obsessive top, giver of severe lessons. This virulence avoids him the contradictors. We never saw him in debate, on set, confronted with other, more measured experts. Hervé Kempf, the boss of Reporterre, ecological media, offered him such an exchange. Refusal. His anti-renewable energy discourse gradually became caricatured, calling on LinkedIn on January 8 for a moratorium on wind and photovoltaic power, a wish usually classified very far to the right.
In order to slay the wind turbines, he maintains that it would take 550,000 to cover part of our needs, an absurd figure, immediately heard in the mouth of Eric Ciotti, the LR boss. “He cites dated IPCC figures, he makes risky comparisons on COP and CO2 emissions, he is wrong about the inertia of the climate, we point it out to him, he does not correct”, deplores the founder of Hespul , an association defending renewables. In his comic strip, Janco tackles the cost of solar energy, ignoring the latest report from the international renewable energy agency. This indicates that their cost would have fallen by 85% in ten years. Could it be that Jancovici no longer has time to update himself, twirling from conferences to videos, from LinkedIn to high mass at the CAC 40, stunned by his success, touched to see – finally – an educated generation drinking his words and ready to implement this urgently needed transition? “Don’t gorge yourself on your knowledge”, Nicolas Hulot whispered to him twenty years ago. A good advice.