How to convert energy consumption into design

The energy sector is faced with a number of difficulties. These include an apparently insoluble impasse regarding the energy issue in the coming decades and scenarios which have been put forward to ease the situation but which appear rather unattractive. Added to this is the burdensome necessity to mobilise a large number of people in order to make any sort of progress. Since creation is borne out of constraint, the energy sector would therefore appear to be an excellent candidate for design. But how can one make designs for an invisible and immaterial object where what is sold, the hourly energy consumption, is not something tangible to the client. The Eléctricité de France design team had to try and find answers to these issues and underlying societal challenges. In so doing, they had to launch a process whereby various types of objects, like the energy herbarium, were created, and whose function, apart from their utilitarian aspect, was to transmit the element of design throughout the company.