Electricity contracts: Morning leaves TotalEnergies!

In June 2022, a new collective momentum took hold at Morning. The team decided to terminate its contracts with TotalEnergies so as to stop being associated with an economic player that invests heavily in ecocidal projects such as EACOP. 
Since 1 January 2023, our energy suppliers have been Ohm and EDF. In barely 6 months, the team organised itself to make the switch. That speed rather conceals the many challenges that had to be taken into account: soaring prices, budget forecasting, consumption monitoring, an energy-saving plan. Hélène Bertolone, head of impact at Morning, looks back on how it all unfolded.

#1: SUMMER 2022: a talk by Christian Vanizette, a collective wake-up call.

In June 2022, Christian Vanizette – co-founder of Make Sense – addressed the Morning team at the monthly Big Meeting. During his talk, which centred on commitment, Christian spoke about his acts of civil disobedience against TotalEnergies, the mastermind behind the largest climate bomb in the making. It is a 4,000 km pipeline, heated to 50°C and named EACOP.
According to forecasts, this project will release no fewer than 34 million tonnes of CO2 a year, the equivalent of 19 million return trips between Paris and New York in terms of CO2 emissions. An ecological disaster – one among the other climate bombs orchestrated by the French energy giant.

“That day, Christian had the whole room won over in barely 5 minutes”, says Clément Alteresco, founder and CEO of Morning. At the end of the talk, a question shot up from the audience: “Clément, why do we still have Total among our suppliers?”. Awkward chuckles rippled through the room, Clément the first among them, and he suggested the team look into alternatives. He had little choice, but above all he was convinced.

#2: AUTUMN 2022: assessing the alternatives, drawing up a specification.

The administrative and finance team launches a tender alongside the impact team to find new, more responsible suppliers. For Hélène Bertolone, head of impact at Morning, the challenges were many. “We embarked on this process at the very moment of a historic surge in energy prices in France. Businesses don't benefit from the price caps applied to households, and Morning isn't eligible for any state support”.

In such a context, the 180-degree turn was a hard thing to get to grips with. The head of impact highlights the need for internal adjustments: “The suppliers were also bearing the full brunt of this price spike; as a result, their prices go up. We had to adapt our budget forecasts to these new costs”. Our choice ultimately fell on Ohm énergie, our main supplier and a Morning member, along with EDF. Thanks to the efforts of both parties, the amount of our bills has been multiplied by roughly 4.5 for the year 2023, instead of 5.5 with the other suppliers.

Even so, electricity charges now account for 45% of our operating costs, compared with around 10% in 2022!

#3: LATE 2022: terminating TotalEnergies, starting up with Ohm and EDF, managing consumption.

In November 2022, the termination letters go out. Hélène Bertolone points to the happy coincidence of events: “Inflation aside, we were lucky with the timing. At the end of 2022, our contracts were coming to an end. We were free of any commitment to them, so we were able to stop them without any constraints."
The change of suppliers set off a series of new measures. If we were going to commit to more responsible energy, we might as well keep an eye on our consumption. We put in place an energy management system to better understand our buildings' consumption via the INTENT Technologies platform. This interface makes it possible to "monitor" all of our buildings and automatically records consumption data (electricity, gas, water, water cooling). The platform is able to trigger alerts in the event of a malfunction.

In parallel, other initiatives were taken as part of the energy-saving plan. “A lighting audit is planned in the coming months to optimise our electricity consumption even further”, says Hélène. She goes on: “In our spaces, the lighting system is based on the settings of our presence detectors. But this system has its limitations. The detectors sometimes lack sensitivity to daylight; the lighting occasionally comes on during the day, which uses energy needlessly”.

Despite a high-performing system, some adjustments remain to be made and there is still huge room for improvement. The Morning impact team stays open to trialling innovative new tools to optimise its consumption. A word to the wise!

As a bonus, we wanted to introduce you to the Make Sense association, a real gem of an organisation that is well worth discovering.

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