概要

Climate change imperatives and the need for an energy transition are on the agenda in France like in Japan. Attempts to create more energy efficient or low-carbon cities are not new, as evidenced by many achievements of sustainable or eco-districts in various European countries including France or by the successive promotion programs of Japanese government.
Benefiting from the development of smart grid technology which is a new technical step in the regulation of energy demand, recent years' experimentations aim at testing on limited areas the coordinated implementation of new technologies and at collecting data to foresee relevant solutions. They focus on energy saving, efficiency of buildings, new mobility, and on the introduction of energy from renewable sources. But, they also deal with the modification of the behavior of citizens who are called upon becoming smart (consomactors/prosumers), changing their energy consumption trends according to information they get almost in real time.
After having briefly introduced the energy transition context in France (and EU), the presentation will then focus on case studies of smart-grids/smart communities demonstrators in France (Lyon) and in Japan (Yokohama/keihanna) to address different issues such as: the way national policies are concretely implemented at the local level (multi-level governance, actors involved); technologies implemented and associated schemes or incentives for population to accept and behave accordingly; and main results achieved to date. To conclude some differences which came out from observation in both countries will be discussed.