On 28 March 2021, Émile Servan-Schreiber shared Jean-Marc Jancovici’s criticism of European energy choices and attached a short judgement: “Quand le conformisme tue l’intelligence...” In our translation: “When conformity kills intelligence...” The remark concerns how decisions are made, not a probability forecast about an energy outcome.
Jancovici’s post contrasted support for gas and hydrogen made with carbon capture with the uncertain treatment of nuclear power. He argued that decision-makers were favouring technologies with infrastructure or deployment obstacles while withholding support from an existing low-carbon option. His explanations and numerical comparisons were advocacy claims in the post; they were not a controlled comparison supplied by Servan-Schreiber.
The policy questions behind the criticism
Hydrogen strategy and green-finance eligibility pose different policy questions. The first concerns how a fuel might support the energy transition. The second concerns which investments meet specified environmental criteria. A comparison needs to keep those decisions separate before judging their consistency.
Subsequent primary records help explain those tests. The European Parliament’s April 2021 hydrogen report acknowledged a transitional role for low-carbon hydrogen subject to emissions and lock-in concerns. The Joint Research Centre’s technical assessment, listed by the EU Publications Office in August 2021, examined nuclear energy against the taxonomy’s requirement to avoid significant environmental harm, including radioactive waste. These later records provide policy context rather than proof of the precise proposals Jancovici criticised in March.
Why independence of judgement matters
There is evidence for the general concern about conformity. A 2011 experiment by Jan Lorenz and colleagues found that giving participants information about others’ estimates could narrow the range of judgements without improving collective accuracy. Participants could become more confident as their answers converged. The study involved factual estimation tasks, not European energy institutions.
That distinction limits the conclusion. It supports asking whether a decision process preserves independent evidence and dissent. It does not demonstrate why the policies criticised by Jancovici took their particular form, or establish that disagreement with his preferred option was caused by conformity.
The forecasting connection is procedural: specify the outcome being compared, preserve competing assessments and test claims against common evidence. Servan-Schreiber develops related concerns about diversity and independence in his discussion of collective intelligence. The 2021 energy post is an attributed critique of judgement, rather than evidence that a crowd successfully forecast the transition.
