NEOMA Business School’s PGE students start the new year with a focus on the “Sustainable Transition”

Published on 13 September 2022 by NEOMA

At the start of this 2022-2023 academic year, more than 1,000 students in the second year of the MIM Programme are mobilised around the issues of sustainable development and climate change as part of the “Sustainable Transition” seminar. Built on a multidisciplinary approach, giving the floors to scientists, political leaders, business leaders and experts in management science, this three-day event aims to raise awareness amongst the PGE student body about the complexity of the issues related to the sustainable transition.

A multidisciplinary seminar, combining academic, political and professional perspectives

This three-day seminar, built around a multidisciplinary approach, gave the floor to international experts on the questions and issues related to the sustainable transition. ”Our aim is to give students the keys to a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of these issues”, emphasises Diana Mangalagiu, professor at NEOMA Business School and seminar organiser. “We are confident that the knowledge acquired during this seminar will enable them to take informed positions on the way forward in the response to the climate crisis”.

The seminar combined plenary lectures, interactive sessions and round tables with scientists, practitioners and business leaders. Students were able to benefit from the expertise of Dr. Adina Revol, Spokesperson for the European Commission in France, during a conference entitled “The European Green Deal and Energy Security: Friends, Not Enemies”, and Jeremie Fosse, Co-founder and President of Eco-Union, an independent environmental think tank. Several academic experts also contributed their insights, including Jenny Lieu, Professor of Sustainability and Just Transitions at Delft University of Technology and Antoine Mandel, Professor of Mathematical Economics at the Sorbonne and co-founder of the climate risk consulting firm CLIMAFIN.

A climate simulation game to put into practice

The last day of the seminar was dedicated to putting the concepts discussed during the previous two days into practice. The students, organised in different thematic groups (finance, renewable energies, fossil fuels, nature, etc.), had to negotiate and take decisions with the view of keeping global temperatures below the projected 2°C increase in 2100, using the EN-ROADS simulation tool.

“For this final simulation, we chose to rely on a tool that allows us to consult the most recent scientific data, which – through the analysis of many interconnected factors – allows us to better understand the complexity of the energy transition and the weight of many parameters on the success of policies in this area. During the simulation, students could measure the ‘domino effect’ of their decisions in real time and thus assess the multifactorial character of a sustainable and effective green transition policy”.

Léna, Reims campus – “I really liked being able to measure some of the real aspects of global warming, and to be able to act by testing certain solutions and readjusting them according to the results. I gained a better understanding of the cross-cutting nature of the climate challenge”.

Adrien, Rouen campus – “I was involved in the fossil fuel industry group, and contrary to what I thought at first, I discovered that solutions exist to limit their impact, or even to counterbalance it. On the other hand, other issues that we saw as evident turned out to be harmful”.

Jean, Reims campus – “This initiative has allowed me to better understand the ins and outs of the issues related to the sustainable transition. For example, we debated a lot during the simulation game about nuclear power, each of us having firm positions at the beginning and in the end the debate opened us up to other points of view”.

Manon, Rouen campus – “Thanks to the simulation, I’ve realised that there are real solutions. We can work together, across all the generations and industries, to put in place initiatives to effectively fight global warming”.