Only 9% of our energy comes from renewable sources!

Only 9% of our energy comes from renewable sources! This is why Mortierbrigade has launched the #GreyDayChallenge on behalf of Canvas. The challenge is an online format where we throw down the gauntlet and ask everyone to experience environmental urgency through their mobile phone battery. Only 9% of our country’s energy comes from renewable sources. What if you only had 9% left on your smartphone battery? Absolute panic! This is the same sense of urgency we want to evoke towards green energy use in Belgium. This campaign keys into ‘low battery anxiety’, a phenomenon which describes that feeling of panic caused by a near-empty phone.

People become practically hysterical when their battery runs out; however, this sense of urgency is very much absent when the same people are told that our renewable energy has been used up. That's why Mortierbrigade and Canvas have launched the #GreyDayChallenge which invites everyone to last a ‘Grey’ day  with just 9% battery power on their smartphone - the same percentage of renewable energy Belgium has access to over an entire year.

Several Belgian celebrities are taking on the #GreyDayChallenge. Sofie Lemaire, Sven Pichal, “Sociaal Incapabele Michiel” and many others will try to see how far they can get with only 9% of battery power. This will immediately show us all that 9% is totally inadequate and deserving of our anxiety. The challenge takes place on the social media channels of both Canvas and our local celebrities.

To announce the challenge, Mortierbrigade developed a ‘Low Battery Banner’ that fills your smartphone screen and displays the all too familiar ‘Low Battery’ warning. After the initial panic, a message is then displayed to tell you that this is actually a warning about renewable energy levels in Belgium. For a moment, that was pretty scary!

The days preceding February 4th involve a Grey Day radio commercial countdown which reports exactly how many days, hours, minutes and seconds of green energy we have left. The top topical ad on Grey Day itself - February 4th - shows an empty battery showing a green line instead of the usual red to indicate that our annual portion of green energy has been used up.

What is Grey Day?

Grey Day is the day our renewable energy runs out. That’s 2 days more than last year ... and bad news. In 2018, Grey Day’s fell on February 2nd. This year, it’s February 4th. At this rate it will take 227 years to achieve 100% renewable energy. That’s more or less in 2245, which is much too late. Belgium will be stretched to provide approximately 9% renewable energy in 2019 according to the latest figures our country has reported to Europe. Barely a 0.4 percent increase, or less than a day and a half more than in 2016. Belgium’s first day without green energy in 2019 is February 4th. Climate objectives require us to have reached 13% by 2020. That's 4% in a single year! We still have a lot of work to do.