France - ADEME

FRENCH AGENCY FOR ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT (ADEME), BRGM AS A THIRD PARTY OF ADEME

ADEME (French Agency for Environment and Energy Management) is an industrial and commercial public institution placed under the joint supervision of Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Planning and Development and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

ADEME aims to be the point of reference and privileged partner for the general public, companies and local authorities, acting as the State's tool to generalise the best practices designed to protect the environment and energy saving.

ADEME is involved in the following sectors: air pollution, noise, waste, energy (energy management and renewable energies), environmental management, polluted sites and soils, transports.

Within the framework of public policies defined by the government, the Agency's mission is to stimulate, animate, coordinate, facilitate and perform operations aiming at the environment protection and energy management.

ADEME employs 850 persons located in 3 central offices (Angers, Paris, and Valbonne), 26 regional branches, 4 representations in the French overseas department and 1 office in Brussels.

ADEME has many competencies to accomplish its mission:

  • scientific and technical competencies to encourage more environmentally-friendly solutions,
  • expert assessment and consultancy competencies to guide decision-makers in their projects and facilitate their choices
  • resources centre competency capitalizing the results of local experience to encourage the dissemination of best practices to all members of society
  • Theses competencies enable ADEME to work in a very wide range of ways which constitute the specific aspects of its role:
  • guidance, organization and funding of research programmes,
  • consultancy and experts assessments
  • development of methodological tools and dissemination of best practices,
  • supporting decision-making, exemplary operations and projects,
  • training, information, communication and awareness-raising actions

All sectors of society are concerned: businesses, local authorities, government departments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the general public, international partners.

To implement its policies and its actions, ADEME develops many partnerships with federations of professionals, major companies, local authorities and NGOs or equivalent structures in other country.

Lead Person:Philippe LAPLAIGE is an expert Project Officer in charge of Geothermal Activities within the Renewable Energies Department. He has been acting as a programme co-ordinator for national and international geothermal energy projects since 1993. He has been involved, as French expert, for geothermal projects such as QUALICERT (IEE), THERMIE, ALTENER, SAVE and 5th and 6th FPRD programmes. He also participated to the definition of the French partial risk guarantee and funding scheme for Geothermal Energy Utilization. He has been among other responsible of the follow-up, evaluation and financing of the European Hot Dry Rock Programme in Soultz. He speaks and writes English fluently.