Lytefire is unique. It is for workers, entrepreneurs, and artisans from the South and made possible with the support of the humanitarian sector and industrial sponsors.
Lytefire is not open source and it is not low tech.
We do not like labels. We simply do our work and our users create the impact. That’s it.
This clarification is important in France where we see our work mispresented, even after several attempts to ask for clarity. We like clarity. It’s the basis for trust. So we already clarified on open source, low tech etc. in other posts but it seems more clarity is even needed. Here we go.
At the beginning some of us were idealists, some even activists. Some founders believed that only radical actions can make change. Others believed only in hard work, field results and impact. These are the ones running Lytefire today.
Our path is the one of impact entrepreneurship, meaning that our work itself is bringing to society the answers we have created to the problem(s) we wanted to solve. It is easy to understand that for us, as a company, what matters is not the dissemination of proofs of concept or MVP but the sale of a product that keeps its promises and makes its users happy.
Activism (or “militantisme” in French) isn’t like that. Activism takes a few brilliant ideas that illustrate solutions, and then speaks loud to gain supporters. The goal is to propose new ideas, to inspire new ways of thinking, so that solutions can emerge. So here we are going to clarify something about one such type of activism: Engineer activism.
We have the utmost respect for any person and organization truly motivated by positive change in this world and actually doing things for more social justice, but activism is something different.
At Lytefire, the problem we wanted to solve with the support of international NGOs and other stakeholders is poverty, and especially the lack of access to a powerful source of clean energy for millions of women, farmers and micro-entrepreneurs in Africa. Not to provide people with a solar box to cook one meal at a time, not to provide 2 photovoltaic panels to do the homework at night, which are already great to raise living standards, but in order to provide a powerful clean energy source to be used as much as possible to create value, money, and sustainable jobs.
13 years later the mission is accomplished and Lytefire’s impact is 3 times what we first thought.
Since 2012, Lytefire has developed a new and robust model based on simple and powerful technology, very well suited to our users in the Southern and sunny countries, be it a community, artisans or a school canteen’s chef. We are selling Lytefire PRO with hybrid energy made in Kenya. And we also offer training for TVET programs, vocational schools and capacity building programs. On top of this, we created several high-tech models with CNC manufacturing and automatic tracking, and we continue to do so. In parallel, from time to time we have sold construction guides for DIY enthusiasts in the EU.
This is what we do, with a unique business model and with shareholders who have accepted to support a business primarily dedicated to humanitarian impact and solving climate change.
Clarification: The source of the storytelling
With that in mind, it’s no longer acceptable to stand by and hear what’s being disseminated in France about Lytefire in the conferences given by Loïc Pérochon and Arnaud Crétot. At this point we need to provide some perspective on what’s been happening in France over the last few years. With respect to the rest of our activities, this is minor but we are tired of this situation and we hope this post will bring clarity to the stakeholders.
Arnaud Crétot was a co-founder, shareholder and CTO with us for a few years. During a tough year, we had to stop his contract and in order to keep engaging with Lytefire, he decided to learn about baking and eventually test Lytefire at home, in France. We encouraged his testing of solar baking in Normandy with a solar oven that Lytefire built and shipped to him from Switzerland. In 2020, he needed a bigger solar oven to support his budding bakery operation. An engineer friend of his, Loïc Pérochon, introduced him to a small metal working factory nearby.
This was the starting point of a burst of enthusiasm around commercializing Lytefire in the French market. Joined by an online “marketing resistant” expert, their group thought that they would revolutionize the French baking sector, by mentoring hundreds of artisans to adopt the solar oven. We allowed them to use our brand in France but they labelled our work “Low-tech” despite our multiple and clear attempts to explain that we were rejecting this label. The engineering group was finding much-needed purpose in their work on Lytefire, so much so, that our inputs were no longer valued. The factory owners then used the newly “low-tech” designated Lytefire to surf on the French “Low-tech wave” to attract financing. Then they offered us a transformation, where they wanted to create a holding where our “secondary” humanitarian activities could continue in a corner. We said No.
On the basis of a single proof of concept built around one prototyped solar oven, the newbie baker part of the group then wrote a book and dozens of media started to take interest in his great self-proclaimed success - which is real for him and nothing in this post aims to diminish all the work he accomplished. Along the way, everything we tried to explain in terms of the African impact of Lytefire was dismissed. We saw Lytefire’s innovative approach progressively being cancelled from their storytelling, things being twisted to fit the new story and we had to insist a lot for him to mention our brand with journalists and to tell the truth on his site.
Despite numerous attempts to slow things down and think things through, CPM Industrie’s factory owners kept going and they have marketed, built and sold less than 10 Lytefire Deluxe solar ovens over the first two years. The price was so excessive that we asked them to call it Lytefire “Deluxe” so we wouldn’t lose credibility in front of our international clients. The bigger prototype has also been made for Arnaud. And he proudly announced everywhere that 110 kg of solar baked bread could be made daily. And we all believed it. Yay.
After that, surfing on this buzz in Normandie, NeoLoco, CPM and the consultants joined forces to create La Belle Tech, and then the TELED methodology to adapt the industrial sector to the limitations of solar, a.k.a. intermittent energy. They got financial support from French agencies to create things related to low-tech, and proposed to organize the production around the limitation of intermittent solar energy, and received lots of recognition. According to them, they “invented” the professionalization of low-tech and the “distributed factory". And so we continued to watch them being invited everywhere in France, in the top-class management schools and engineer’s programs to spread their vision, which is to “professionalize Low-Tech” and create “distributed factories”. Smart.
The so-called French “success” story
Now since NeoLoco is the root of all this and claims to be a place of experiments, let’s get a closer look at this experiment. 4 years later, what do we really have in France around all this?
Deluxe solar baking at NeoLoco:
NeoLoco bakes only 30% with solar, the rest is wood.
110 kg of solar bread per day is an absolute maximum with the unique big prototype in use there. And it implies being next to the oven all day to track the sun. In terms of organization, it’s simply impossible for any other bakery.
Only one type of bread is baked, and it’s a farmer’s bread that is not to everyone’s taste but luckily there was no competition in the region so this is never mentioned as a limitation. According to them, it’s a success.
Clearly this version of Lytefire Deluxe isn’t a professional tool adapted to actual bakeries, the results aren’t good for regular bread and traditional baking production. What this group of people has done was to organize a test and draw conclusions way too quickly about it without listening to our feedback. Feedback which was based on experience coming from African users, yes, but was it less valuable?
Since then we spoke to several “real” French bakers who simply explained to us the way their working day is organized and why things happen like this and like that around and inside their ovens. This confirmed our initial intuition that Lytefire Deluxe in the French context cannot be considered a professional tool per se. All this buzz has been created by an activist bakery supported by activist engineers and activist customers getting interest from institutions in great need of creativity and fresh perspective, even if not realistic.
Can NeoLoco test be replicated?
With French bakeries we do not believe so and it hasn’t happened in the last 4 years. The tool must be adapted properly to its users. Change is hard. There are numerous factors preventing people from changing and, in the case of the solar bakery, it was impossible to ask the users to:
Invest more than 20k€ (or 30k€ for Arnaud’s big unit) to change their continuous energy source to an intermittent one
+ adapt their entire business model and practice to solar energy intermittence
+ limit their production to what is allowed by the tool (e.g. rustic bread only).
In the course of history we know that people adapt. And we’re not saying that bakers can’t adapt to all this, of course not. But such an adaptation is called survival and we are not there (yet) in Europe: Customers still ask for quality products solving their needs. Yet, this activist vision of a “solar bakery” is NeoLoco’s model and the intellectual foundation of the TELED approach created out of this experiment to advise bigger industry sectors.
Deluxe Solar roasting:
Here the results have been much more encouraging in the French context. This is where things could have really been interesting in France and still could be. We do not have much data about it in Africa but it has been tested several times. And so it seems that this is where the Lytefire can be a great tool and provide real income, opening a new sector to small-scale local food transformation in France.
NeoLoco makes most of its profit from their solar roasting activity because the solar roasted products are lasting longer than the bread, which allows better production planning when the activity is based on intermittent solar energy.
There are 2 other very interesting artisans in France: Du Soleil et des Graines, and Aurinko. We hope that researchers will contact us and these artisans to collect data and explore the economics of this solar activity (here).
Other Solar Artisans (les Artisans Solaires Nourriciers):
With DIY models, other artisans have started other interesting activities: One micro-brewery and food canning workshops organizers have started up. Here also the results seem also very interesting, but the Lytefire also has limitations in these contexts. We’ll keep following this development.
The consequences for us
The French buzz and the way it has been managed had direct consequences on our work. On our side, because the “new professional low tech solar oven” device had “Lytefire” in its name and is our "improved" design, we had to manage the delusion of the few Deluxe clients believing that they could run “a solar bakery” with the device, half of them reselling their ovens after a year or two, even after attending a course at NeoLoco. To understand better their bad experience, we had to confront their poor results with the ones communicated to us by Arnaud’s and try to get clarity from him. We also had to understand the needed improvements to serve the bakers (artisan and not), and sadly to turn down hundreds of prospects in this country.
Years after, in France we can still see our work constantly associated with the Low-tech movement which isn’t something we wished for and about which we have been clear from the start (here in 2020). But this storytelling has been so dominant that interns and students studying cases entirely based on the use of Lytefire don’t even reach us to understand its great performances in different contexts and the reasons for its limitations in the French one. Entire press articles and interviews have been elaborating on the “low-tech side of Lytefire” aka its simplicity, discarding completely the solidarity aspect of our work. Mistakes continue to be spread again and again by Low-Tech enthusiasts,as well as unauthorized tutorials. On the Low-tech Lab website, one can also find performances coming out of nowhere.
Another example of complete lack of rigor and proper contextualization can be found in a recent study, involving researchers from Technological University Dublin, Université de Mon, Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Université de Technologie de Troyes and Arts et Métiers Institute of Technology. It is called Lessons in Low-Tech: A Handbook for Sustainable Education and the very first low tech presented with a big picture is... Neoloco’s Lytefire oven.
None of these researchers had the idea of double checking what Lytefire is. It’s really hard to believe but it’s true.
Same storytelling with the association Vagabonds de l’énergie, founded by Arnaud and run by his friends. This association gets funding for events and pedagogical events where the Lytefire is showcased to people as a low-tech solution with no reference to its core mission. These activists are truly unbelievable. They claim that they care for the planet but they don’t even care about the designers of the equipment they’re using! They can’t listen, they can’t respect, they just go and we’re tired of this. Below is a picture of their Lytefire showcased at the Festval Chemins de Travers, in France, visited by 7000 people.
Sometimes, we have been invited to events by prestigious French institutions but not out of interest for our core work and unique business model rather than to discuss Low-tech! So not a great experience on our side.
After all this buzz, as a company, what were we supposed to answer to all the prospects interested in getting a Lytefire for their eco-village, their farm, their micro-baking activity? We adapted: we brought the DIY plans on sale again, we opened a forum to all the builders and we welcomed any French artisan willing to purchase a license with us to fabricate and sell at cheaper price. Which we did with 2 artisans, and now it’s just one and yes, Gregoire is a low tech guy but that is not the reason why we work with him.
Even if we do not recognize ourselves fully in these movements, we value very much all the work conducted by the Low-Tech and Open Source eco-systems. These groups are exploring new and interesting ways to create and spread different tools. Our cooperation with Grégoire and the Low-Tech Lab Grenoble is making us happy because even though our DNA is not open source and we do not want to be labelled as “low tech”, our difference is respected and clear avenues for collaboration have been defined. At the moment, if you are in France and if you wish to experiment something with a Lytefire, one artisan, who is also part of the Low-Tech movement, can build you a Lytefire at a reasonable price or help you build yours.
We believe that cooperation and dialogue with everyone are key because everybody can participate to the social change but this can work only with respect of all stakeholder’s.
Credits, Labels and Professionalism
All the French low-tech storytelling in relation to Lytefire is wrong and it is a problem because some people have been continuously using their experience with our design to promote their activities while spreading confusion and falsehoods about us. We cannot tolerate anymore the fact that Lytefire’s technology was initially created for Africa and this being misrepresent by La Belle Tech, NeoLoco, TELED and their followers who are all claming that they have professionalized this low-tech.
There are many examples of this falsehood over the last years and in this post we will focus only on recent ones.
In a conference given last winter in Le Dôme Centre Scientifique de Caen Normandie, Elise Hauters, CPM’s owner, talks with emotion about how she met with Arnaud and Loïc in 2020. She talks about CPM’s workers finding so much purpose in working on "a" solar oven at the time (here, at 34:35), never naming Lytefire and of course inserting this experience in the storytelling meant to ground her deep and long-time commitment with ecology and low tech. For sure this experience with the production of Lytefire Deluxe in a metal factory specialized in aeronautics helped them a lot to position themselves as eco-stakeholders in the region, with all the funding that came thanks to this first brick of storytelling.
From our point of view, CPM made some very questionable changes to our design given the user’s performance shared above with Lytefire Deluxe. Based on this and what has been presented above, isn’t it a bit presumptuous to claim what they have done with our oven is “to professionalize this low-tech”, as Loïc Pérochon states in this same conference (see below)?
At that point, when Lytefire Deluxe started to be sold by CPM in 2021, we had completed two years of work with Autodesk Foundation in their San Francisco research center and several pilots in East Africa. We delivered to international NGOs like World Vision and Plan International. Our units were fabricated by artisans and after that by an industrial Kenyan factory with quality control. Is it so that African artisans are considered “unprofessional” by these French “experts”? Is it so that the results and expertise we bring from Africa are non-existent? If our work has finally been “professionalized” by them, what exactly are we meant to think about our own work? And where exactly would they be without all the work accomplished by us.
The fact that we had indeed already industrialized and professionalized elsewhere what they call a “low tech” product is never ever mentioned!
Nor the fact that our tech was created for the Southern countries and that its adaptation to the French market was secondary to us.
This is important because usually the technologies comes from the North to the South and we propose something a little bit different for once as we are trying to redefine the concept of humanitarian aid.
And the fact that we have been (and still are to our knowledge) the first clean energy company ever allowing access to a device through several entry points corresponding to different technical levels and contexts is also discarded:
– DIYers purchasing our construction manual to build the most basic version,
– Local and international NGOs purchasing ready made Lytefire units manufactured industrially
– Special projects commissioning us for high-tech developments.
Another example in this same conference, Loïc Pérochon states that:
"La Belle Tech is a fairly young company, being just over 2 years old. The 5 founding members met back in 2020 when we industrialized a low-tech product which is the one you see here, a solar concentration oven, a Lytefire, a solar concentration oven used by Arnaud Crétot, founder of Neoloco. (...) When he launched his business, he first had a self-built one because there were no solar concentration oven on the market. He quickly realized that it had its limits for a professional activity (...) and so we thought that we were going to industrialize this furnace to make it professional. And we had just professionalized a low-tech product (...) We quickly said to ourselves that we had to do the same with other low-tech products because this object itself is relatively of little interest." (here, starting at 19:30).
Excuse me? No solar concentration oven on the market at that time? And this object is "of little interest"?
What about the small ovens sold by Solar Brother, Sun Oven or GoSun, or the bigger one from Villager Sun Oven? What about the 4 millions small solar cookers and small ovens distributed by Solar Cooker International? And what about all the handcrafted solar ovens Lytefire already sold, installed and in use?
To enhance this fairy tale, Arnaud is also misrepresenting his role in our company everywhere. For example, in a conference with APCC (Association des Professionnels en Climat Energie et Environnement), he showed a huge Lytefire prototype made in India (picture below) as if he was part of this "big" project. The truth is that other team members were working on this at Mr Desai’s Gandhian factory and the prototype was already completed when Arnaud visited. At that time, his contribution was a series of long discussions on the factory’s roof where our first prototype of that size was standing. Arnaud simply used the footage and concepts he captured to support his documentary film about sustainable energy solutions.
Arnaud Crétot took a lot of inspiration from us (at the time, when he visited India, in 2010, before the creation of our company, all the work was done by Eerik, Lorin, and Eva). Later on, in 2014, as CTO for our company created in 2012, Arnaud has been hired and he conducted data analysis with difficulties because it wasn’t that easy to collect them. He brought some good inputs to our software but he then mostly focused on finding institutional partners and funders for giant projects in Africa that weren’t aligned with our core mission and never happened. Looking back, we notice the absence of any technical improvements by this former CTO during his job with us.
We understand now that instead of improving the tech, this engineer was more passionate about using it as it is, and making the rest of society adjust accordingly. His intentions were good of course, we don’t doubt this. He did succeed in his experiment with NeoLoco. But since a big part of his success was based on the promotion of a Lytefire, for us it’s crucial that NeoLoco’s and Arnaud’s experience is seen as the unique case it is and not a ready model for scale up in France as he portrays it. It is also crucial that he and his friends promote our design to reflect our work and spirit properly.
In the above picture, this early work in 2010 shows a very different tech to what Lytefire evolved to today. We have asked Arnaud multiple times to remove that picture from his public material and to respect how Lytefire wants to be presented and we have not been heard. We are then told that all the promotions he does are good for us. Even when we explain that we never see our work properly represented in his storytelling, it doesn’t matter to him and that’s why it’s not valuable, why it’s damaging for us.
This misrepresentation and cancellation of our work have obviously affected the entire ecosystem in France surrounding to the La Belle Tech group.
Without even getting into Ademe’s official reports attributing the solar oven conception to CPM, labeling it as a low tech without even asking us, barely mentioning our brand, supporting the Normand experiment with various funding mechanisms, etc., we remember well last winter the day we received the Low-tech Journal n°16.
See the beautiful Lytefire solar oven on the cover (below)? A solar coffee experimentation is mentioned in an article, happening somewhere in France at Kerlotec with a Lytefire Deluxe. But guess what? The Lytefire’s name for the solar oven is not mentioned anywhere. Rather, Kerlotec and local ecosystem partners are highlighted as “innovators”. With Lytefire in it all, wouldn’t it be natural to simply mention the tech? But why would they? Kerlotec founders are close to CPM so same ethic there.
So, from now on and without diminishing the skills and “world-changing” intentions of these people, we want our model, our brand and our expertise to be mentioned or referred to properly.
To repeat, Lytefire is neither low-tech nor is it open source.
We would like to be credited and referred to properly or not mentioned at all (and if you chose to not mention us, we ask us not to show us by picture or drawing without credits). We have tried through dialogue many times but we have not been heard which is really weird. None of these activists understands nor seems to care so we say it here now.
The very unique model we have created and defended since 2012 is part of the indispensable diversity needed in renewable technologies, and even if it is based on solidarity it must be referred to properly. Attribution and proper contextualization is a minimum.
Conclusion
If you are about to start a super innovative journey with a new impactful product creating a new market, be careful with whom you allow your first users to be, and how they present your innovation. A story can live long and generate lots of confusion, waste time and create frustration on both sides. And if you are doing something truly innovative, remember that clarity is essential to be able to position your work properly for your users. If you feel undermined, ring the alarm again and again. Better stop what’s happening than hope to salvage it. Unfortunately, we had to learn this a bit of a hard way.
We talked here about a small group of very motivated people driven by an intellectual ambition to use our design and ideas from our model for activism and media gain without ever referring to their original inspiration (Lytefire being one among many obviously, but an outstanding one nonetheless).
And yes, these people sold, under our name, the Deluxe ovens that were not adapted to the French context. We warned them and tried to slow things down but like it is so often the case with activists, they didn’t listen to their cautioning partner at the time. We’ve terminated all forms of cooperation with them and Arnaud sold his shares in 2024. Unfortunately we can see everywhere that they continue to use our design and the experience around it to spread their engineer activist hype in France, everywhere where institutions are in need of creativity and fresh intellectual air. We hope this will stop sooner or later, and that people come back to some common sense.
And mind you, we are not saying that there is no future for solar baking in France, far from it. We are just staying that the NeoLoco and TELED model as portrayed by this group in France is far from being a repliquable success, and that the failure of the Lytefire Deluxe in France should be called that, even if it leads us to the learning’s we have now that create the basis for high-tech improved solar ovens adapted to the French market. More about that soon!
Well, they say that when people start diminishing you it’s the beginning of your success, isn’t it?
Well, maybe. In East Africa, the results of our solar ovens are great and obvious because Lytefire is very adapted to this context.
It can be improved, of course, and we are on it step by step. But the results are here: Lytefire is profitable to its East-African users running small bakeries and it supports the productive use of clean energy.
If you want to know more, don’t hesitate to ask for our case studies in Kenya and Uganda with solar bakeries.
Unfortunately with solar roasting it hasn’t been possible to collect data properly so far, and that’s why it would be amazing to see this being developed in future with French scientists taking interest in this. We are open to collaborate but best is to reach out directly to the artisans.
Lytefire is a tech developed primarily to bring impact to users in Africa and sunny countries, to help entrepreneurs, schools and organizations stop burning charcoal and firewood, and adopt clean energy today. We are the only energy company simultaneously producing industrially, while also supporting NGOs as well as DIYers to go solar. We will continue to bring it to many different professional eco-system’s without any label and without confusion about our core values.
Thank you.
If you are interested in more about our model, Urs has written even more about our innovation and also the open source side of things.
What’s in your hands? Low-Tech, Mid-Tech or High-Tech?
Debunking Open Source in Impact
!["[LOW-TECH] Projet d’ingénierie UNDERSOLAR : un four solaire, ancrés dans les spécificités du territoire"](local/cache-gd2/2f/877fe8b8e6e3c4b6ff3a155cf9307c.jpg?1747653304)
!["[LOW-TECH] Projet d’ingénierie UNDERSOLAR : un four solaire, ancrés dans les spécificités du territoire"](local/cache-gd2/c3/aca775a2608cfb7df2279b04586c58.jpg?1747653304)
Comments
By Urs Riggenbach, Head of Operations, Lytefire
On June 2nd, 2025, we received an email from Mr Cretot, demanding that our company publish Mr Cretot’s right to reply on the above blog post.
The email is formulated as a legal letter, explaining to us how French laws work and how they are applicable to our Finnish company, and what fines apply if we don’t comply. As we are aware of French law, we must point out that the same French lawbooks also state that if a comment section is open, such right to reply should be made in that comment section.
A day later we received a similar email from Mr Perochon, asking for the same. Both of them declined my invitation to submit their comments to the below comments form.
Though we don’t have any legal obligation on the matter, Lytefire’s team believes in fair representation. We understand frustration and unpleasant feelings and we make room for everybody to present their point of view.
We have therefore decided to manually publish their responses below in the blog post’s comments. In order to avoid confusion, the profiles created to post these comments are: “Right to reply: Arnaud Crétot” and “Right to reply: Loïc Pérochon”. They can be found under the post with their original PDFs attached (8 pages by Mr Cretot and 2 pages by Mr Perochon).
Both Mr Cretot and Mr Perochon are named in the above blog post that’s meant to clarify our experience in France.
We take note that in their emails, there is no reference to defamation, insults or offense from the blog post’s author, Ms Eva Wissenz, Managing Director and Founder. For the sake of clarification to French prospects and partners, Ms Eva Wissenz publicly shared the company’s experience around the Lytefire Deluxe launch with people who have repeatedly ignored her corporate demands while using the Lytefire brand to their marketing advantage. This created lots of confusion resulting in Ms Eva Wissenz handling dozens of useless demands, questions, and after sale service as a result of misinformation. The post was based on a thorough review of the facts.
Ms Eva Wissenz regrets that Mr Crétot is not able to understand the difference between listening to a former business partner’s requests, which did not ask him to be a spokesperson but rather a good shareholder, and feeling controlled or attacked. She also regrets that Mr Crétot cannot understand the difference between the disappointing experience with NeoLoco and a project conducted for a private client (solar sauna). It is also of note that all our team has been underpaid for years and volunteered a lot because of very high motivation in achieving a very difficult goal, which is no less than the eradication of energy poverty. Mr Crétot should keep in mind that he has been for a while the only one with a salary and afterwards being paid some unemployment benefits supporting his new path for a while. His participation has always been paid proportionally to the company’s possibilities. Mr Crétot also received a small commission from sales of the Lytefire Deluxe product.
Mr Cretot claims that people need guidance to bake well with Lytefire. That’s not reflected by our decade of experience with African users. He also states that he "personally supported the first five solar artisans installed in France, as part of a partnership under the name Solar Fire France. That’s probably why these artisans chose roasting over baking: because I provided all the necessary insights throughout the project." We’d like to say here that even though these customers have been informed and educated by Mr Crétot to chose solar roasting, only one of them is still operating with solar roasting and another one uses his device rarely and mostly for pedagogical purposes. The other three have sold their equipment.
In his response, Mr Crétot alludes to “a pattern” that Ms Wissenz supposedly has, but with no examples, which can leave room for any interpretation and seems intended to damage her reputation. Mr Crétot doesn’t mention any example but it is very likely that he refers to the termination of a discussion with a potential partner based in his town (2017), who turned out to be unreliable, to the termination of a partnership agreement with the association he founded (2024), who did not respect the terms of their agreement with Lytefire, and maybe to the termination of the Lytefire Deluxe production by CPM because we were willing to make the product available to French artisans at a significantly lower price (2024). Ms Eva Wissenz is aware that she certainly made sometimes a few mistakes in her corporate communication, especially when she was undergoing a painful personal situation, and she apologized on several occasions, including during a mediation with Mr Crétot. Ms Wissenz understands that these events might have been emotionally difficult for Mr Crétot.
Ms Eva Wissenz would like to remind Mr Pérochon that he rejected a licensing agreement with Lytefire and has never been mandated to contact French institutions to assess our products. Considering his commitment to the low-tech spirit and to the French artisan sector, she is also surprised to this day that Mr Perochon never had an issue with the promotion and sale of low-tech equipment at a price far exceeding its real value.
Mr Cretot was at the center of all these partnerships, and we understand how unpleasant their termination has been for him, and we remeber well how difficult all of this was for us. I believe much of this could have been avoided if Mr Cretot, as a co-founder and shareholder of Lytefire (at that time), would have acted as a co-founder and shareholder of Lytefire, and not like a third party business, or volunteer, which is not the right mindset when it comes to solar impact entrepreneurship.
As we have received a long email from both of them, explaining us French law, we would also like to point out a few incoherences regarding their unsubstantiated attack. This is in regards to French law:
In France, anybody can have the right to reply (article 6-IV , law 21 June 2004 LCEN) and since 2007 a right to reply cannot be enforced if the person can comment directly on a publication, especially when there is no need to log in to post the answer (Article 1, paragraph 2 of Decree No. 2007-1527 of October 24, 2007 related to the right of reply, applicable to online public communication services and application of IV of Article 6 of Law No. 2004-575 of June 21, 2004).
Again, though we don’t have any legal obligation on the matter, Lytefire’s team believes in fair representation and their right to reply can be found below.
By Right to reply: Arnaud Crétot
Right of Reply Regarding Public Accusations by Lytefire
I would like to respond here to public accusations made against myself, the SCOP NeoLoco and TELED. These statements were published on March 31, 2025, by Eva Wissenz (Managing Director & Board Director of Lytefire) on Lytefire’s official website, and were then shared on social media (at least on LinkedIn), including via the official company account and that of its CEO, Urs Riggenbach. The article published by Lytefire’s leadership can be found here: https://lytefire.com/lytefire-is-unique-it-is-not-for-activism
First, I want to say that I am sorry for everyone who has had to read this. Through its leadership, Lytefire has chosen to make a public statement that harms the work carried out by NeoLoco and the TELED collective — work done by dozens of people who never asked to be involved in this situation. It is unfair and was done without any regard for the harm such public smear campaign can cause. I am as sorry for the projects I mentioned as I am for the Lytefire project itself, whose leadership is now employing questionable methods.
Now that these attacks have been published — what can be done?
Under the law, there is a three-month window to exercise a right of reply to a public statement. I could have chosen not to respond to the article published by Lytefire, but I have observed that this kind of message has been repeated over the past few months through different channels. This is not an isolated incident.
In this context, I believe it is important to speak up so that no single perspective goes unchallenged. After this legal window, the article could continue to spread without those involved having a chance to present another view of the facts. That is why I have decided to exercise my right of reply today.
I write this response in my own name and as a representative of NeoLoco. I will leave it to the other targeted individuals and representatives of other targeted entities to respond if they wish to do so.
I consider Lytefire’s public letter to be a reflection of a strategic repositioning in how the company engages with its partners and the solar craft ecosystem. This is not about a change in its core mission, but rather a shift in the way it collaborates with others.
NeoLoco and I have been directly affected by this shift, as others were before us. These changes have sometimes resulted in abrupt partnership breaks, the nature of which was difficult to anticipate or understand. In my view, this letter is a continuation of that pattern.
About a year and a half ago, I made the decision to step away from Lytefire and sell my shares. This decision came after repeated disagreements between the management and some of its partners, as well as my own realization that I could no longer contribute effectively in that environment.
I left the company to protect my health. I allowed the management to choose the buyer of my shares in order to ensure continuity under the best possible conditions. I did not make any financial gain with my shares.
I took this approach in the hope of a peaceful departure. However, my experience within the company had prepared me for the possibility of future tensions — something that recent events have unfortunately confirmed.
Today, I am speaking out publicly to respond to accusations that I believe are unjustified, and which also affect others through their association with me. I believe this response is necessary to set the record straight and to protect the integrity of the projects I represent.
I regret that Lytefire’s current leadership has chosen this form of communication. I doubt this strategy serves the company’s long-term interests.
These attacks are all the more unfortunate as they are based on inaccurate information and do not reflect the reality of the projects I represent.
Below, I have listed the specific accusations directed at me or at NeoLoco the entity I represent, and I have pointed out incorrect information, and provided my response to each of them:
“With that in mind, it’s no longer acceptable to stand by and hear what’s being disseminated in France about Lytefire in the conferences given by Loïc Pérochon and Arnaud Crétot.”
My talks cover topics such as energy issues, the TELED method, and the work of NeoLoco. They are not intended to promote Lytefire, and that’s precisely why I am invited to speak.
In these talks, Lytefire is mentioned twice: first, to explain how I came across the company during my research trip to India on energy; and second, when I give a presentation about NeoLoco, mentioning that we use a Lytefire oven. This mention is simply a fact related to my journey and NeoLoco’s story—there is no obligation to include it.
It seems that Lytefire’s management is trying to influence how the users of its products should communicate. However, each user has their own story and should be free to communicate independently, focusing on their core mission.
“Arnaud Crétot was a co-founder, shareholder and CTO with us for a few years. During a tough year, we had to stop his contract and in order to keep engaging with Lytefire, he decided to learn about baking and eventually test Lytefire at home, in France.”
I created NeoLoco to continue supporting the emergence of Lytefire and, more broadly, to promote the use of solar concentration. However, NeoLoco is not merely an extension of that commitment. As I share in my talks, NeoLoco also embodies the lessons I learned during my research journey with the Les Vagabonds de l’Energie. I discovered that to drastically reduce our energy dependency, we must rethink organizational, economic, and labor models, and transform skillsets. NeoLoco is a full-scale experiment with these ideas, which has a broader scope than solar concentration itself.
Regarding my employment contract with Lytefire, we mutually decided to end it during a difficult year, well before NeoLoco was founded. After that contract ended, I continued to dedicate more than two years of mostly volunteer work to the company. Even after founding NeoLoco, I continued to offer my time and expertise, often on a voluntary basis.
“On the basis of a single proof of concept built around a prototyped solar oven, the newbie baker part of the group then wrote a book and dozens of media started to take interest in his great self-proclaimed success - which is real for him and nothing in this post aims to diminish all the work he accomplished.”
The portrait presented here is both discriminatory and false. In France, it is mandatory to hold a “CAP” diploma in Bakery to legally produce bread, which I obtained in the summer of 2017. Before that, I undertook training for this diploma and worked with several bakers and farmer-bakers whose practices inspired me. From 2017 to 2019, I baked and sold bread every week to test and refine the techniques best suited for use with a solar oven.
In 2019, I founded NeoLoco, initially as a coffee roasting business. It was only after successful trials with a solar oven loaned by Lytefire that I began baking bread with it, whenever conditions allowed. This approach is far from that of an inexperienced or thoughtless person, contrary to the implication of the term “newbie baker.”
Moreover, the book La Boulangerie Solaire, written in 2022 and published in 2023, is the result of over five years of experience, including three years after the founding of NeoLoco. It reflects the seriousness and rigour of our work—unlike the article published by Lytefire, which seems aimed at damaging our reputation.
I did not “self-proclaim” my success, as the article suggests. On the contrary, I have always been transparent about both the opportunities and the challenges, openly sharing my experience with those interested in exploring it. Writing my book stands as a testament to this rigorous work and to a desire to offer an objective snapshot of the knowledge accumulated at the time of writing.
“Along the way, everything we tried to explain in terms of the African impact of Lytefire was opposed. We saw Lytefire’s innovative approach progressively being cancelled from their storytelling, things being twisted to fit the new story and we had to insist a lot for him to mention our brand with journalists and to tell the truth on his site.”
It is clear that Lytefire’s management has consistently pushed to maximize the visibility of Lytefire in the communication of the users of its products. This insistence on controlling the messaging of NeoLoco and other users of the oven unfortunately reveals a disconnect from the realities on the ground. These artisanal businesses rely on the sale of their products and the value of their craft. What baker could make a living by becoming a spokesperson for their oven manufacturer? NeoLoco and other users are not here to sell ovens, and their approach is not limited to the use of a single tool.
The accusation of erasure is clearly baseless :
For those who truly know NeoLoco, this accusation of erasure is difficult to comprehend, given how much the company has contributed to making Lytefire more visible. Media coverage is a distorting mirror, of course. But such situations call for more education and clarity, not more caricature.
“A big prototype has also been made for Arnaud, who proudly announced everywhere that 110 kg of solar baked bread could be made daily. And we all believed it. Yay.”
Lytefire suggests that either I or NeoLoco may have lied about our solar production. What would have been the point? NeoLoco, as an artisanal business, only communicates about its handcrafted production. We are not trying to sell ovens. NeoLoco’s customers are interested in solar production when the weather allows, but they are not focused on the oven itself. Whenever figures have been shared, they have always been accurate. For example, 110 kg is a quantity that can be produced on a day of full sunshine. We have always clearly stated that this was the production on a sunny day, contrary to what is implied in this passage.
We continue to share this information whenever possible, and many journalists have witnessed solar baking firsthand. Is Lytefire’s management accusing them as well of spreading false information?
The real issue here is the need for proper guidance to explain that 110 kg represents the maximum output under optimal sunlight conditions. This is similar to the challenge faced by professionals in solar thermal or photovoltaic energy, who speak in terms of peak kilowatt capacity (as in wind energy). When referring to the capacity of a variable energy system, you must give the maximum capacity and explain how to manage production variability. Solar concentration is no exception. Since the beginning of NeoLoco, I have made this educational work a priority—and the book has greatly contributed to that.
The fact that Lytefire’s management is writing things in this way raises serious concerns about their ability to communicate this information properly. Guidance is crucial in this field. I personally supported the first five solar artisans installed in France, as part of a partnership under the name Solar Fire France. That’s probably why these artisans chose roasting over baking: because I provided all the necessary insights throughout the project. It’s not that solar baking isn’t possible—it’s just much more demanding.
Once the SFF (now called Lytefire) partnership ended, I was largely excluded from further oven-related projects. And today, it is unfair to accuse NeoLoco of having misled Lytefire. The truth is that Lytefire failed to create the conditions for proper user support in the aftermath.
“After that, surfing on this buzz in Normandie, NeoLoco, CPM and the consultants joined forces to create La Belle Tech, and then the TELED methodology to adapt the industrial sector to the limitations of solar, a.k.a. intermittent energy. They got financial support from French agencies to create things related to low-tech, and proposed to organize the production around the limitation of intermittent solar energy, and received lots of recognition.”
TELED is a collective of professionals brought together under a brand that is currently owned by the workers cooperative (“SCOP”) NeoLoco, a Social and Solidarity Economy enterprise. This brand is intended to be transferred to an association or a cooperative society (SCIC). It is false to claim that TELED received public funding to develop its methodology. From 2017 to 2023, NeoLoco developed without any public subsidies (€0). People are often surprised when we say this, but NeoLoco received no public funding at its inception. We may have been considered too innovative to receive support from public authorities. This claim by Lytefire’s management is simply aimed at damaging our reputation without justification.
In 2023, we decided to create the SCOP NeoLoco because the team had grown to three full-time members (until then, the NeoLoco project had been hosted by the Business and Employment Cooperative SCOP 276). Upon the creation of this SCOP—recognized as part of the Social and Solidarity Economy—we received support from the Normandy Region. This automatic support is tied to the creation of an SSE structure, and not to the use of a solar oven or the development of a methodology like TELED.
It is therefore entirely false to suggest that TELED capitalized on a solar oven “buzz” to obtain public funding. This claim is not only incorrect—it is also defamatory toward the public agencies involved, which do not allocate funding based on trends or media hype.
This attack on TELED undermines a serious, innovative, and inspiring body of work carried out by many people, aimed at rethinking how organizations function so they can operate within the limits of variable access to energy and resources.
TELED seeks to build knowledge through the accumulation of empirical experimentation. No “buzz” ever helped develop a methodology capable of making a real impact—by lowering the barriers to adapting economic models to energy and resource variability.
“NeoLoco bakes only 30% with solar, the rest is wood.”
This is not new information. I have been sharing this information openly from the start as it emerged. Regarding the figures, it’s important to note that it’s still too early to give a definitive number—averages over 10 or 20 years would provide a clearer picture. These are basic facts for any professional in the solar field, though they require proper education to convey. NeoLoco is not in the business of claiming success or overhyping our achievements. We are committed to transparently sharing our process as we learn and grow.
“Only one type of bread is baked, and it’s a farmer’s bread that is not to everyone’s taste but luckily there was no competition in the region so this is never mentioned as a limitation. According to them, it’s a success.”
NeoLoco and I have always clearly stated that we produce nourishing, wholesome bread. Hundreds of farmer-bakers in France make similar sourdough breads. It is also false to claim that there is no competition in the region. Around Rouen, there are about fifteen bakeries offering sourdough breads similar to ours—and that number increases regularly. In our own town, there are three other bakeries, and neighboring villages have theirs as well. So people do not buy NeoLoco’s bread out of a lack of options.
We serve all kinds of customers, and we bake five different types of bread each week.
I hesitated for a long time before exercising this right of reply, but I cannot let these falsehoods continue to circulate.
“Since then we spoke to several “real” French bakers who simply explained to us the way their working day is organized and why things happen like this and like that around and inside their ovens. This confirmed our initial intuition that Lytefire Deluxe in the French context cannot be considered a professional tool per se.”
Let us remember that Lytefire is writing from abroad, and one would truly need to be unfamiliar with the bakery sector in France to make such claims. There are as many ways to make bread as there are bakers. From the very beginning, it has been clear that this oven is not for everyone. What surprises me most is that Lytefire’s management claims to have only recently discovered this reality, when in fact, it has been part of our message from the start.
Moreover, I have consistently emphasized that using a solar oven requires transforming one’s skills, organizational methods, and much more. Accusing NeoLoco of claiming that this oven could be used by traditional bakeries without adaptation shows a lack of seriousness in these accusations. A simple reading of my book is enough to demonstrate that I do not, in any way, advocate for a traditional bakery model when it comes to using a solar oven.
Recently, I had the opportunity to present our work to the French trade union for foodservice equipment manufacturers. This conference brought together producers of traditional bakery equipment—electric ovens, mechanical mixers, and so on. My presentation aimed to highlight the kinds of adaptations in organizational models, economic frameworks, and technical skills that are required in light of the energy challenges facing the sector. There was no ambiguity about the transformations made at NeoLoco, nor about what could and could not be applied to traditional bakeries. I did not feel I lacked credibility in front of these professionals. The discussions were of a high standard.
The same goes for the many professionals—including representatives from chambers of trades and crafts—who have visited NeoLoco to get information directly from the source.
“Deluxe Solar roasting:
Here the results have been much more encouraging in the French context. This is where things could have really been interesting in France and still could be. We do not have much data about it in Africa but it has been tested several times. And so it seems that this is where the Lytefire can be a great tool and provide real income, opening a new sector to small-scale local food transformation in France.”
I completely agree. It’s important to recall that the French team — of which I was a part for the sale of the first five Lytefire ovens in France — sold those ovens exclusively for roasting purposes. The reason is simple: baking bread is more complex, as I have consistently emphasized.
Moreover, the ovens sold in France were 5m² models. At NeoLoco, we built an 11m² oven, which is more powerful in order to meet the needs of a bakery operation. That doesn’t mean you can’t bake bread in a 5m² oven — quite the contrary — but naturally, you can bake less at a time.
When Lytefire took back control of oven sales, bakers started receiving ovens without the support that had initially been provided. At the same time, the construction of 11m² ovens was discontinued (the only one that exists to date is NeoLoco’s).
NeoLoco and I have always shared our results in good faith. We’ve always done everything we could to keep our operations open — as much as possible — so that people could come and see for themselves. Had we closed our activity, we would have been criticized for that too. Had we not tried to offer the kind of support we initially provided through SFF (now called Lytefire), it would have been a missed opportunity.
However, I cannot accept being blamed for the consequences of a shift in strategy led by Lytefire — a shift I did not choose.
“NeoLoco makes most of its profit from their solar roasting activity because the solar roasted products are lasting longer than the bread, which allows better production planning when the activity is based on intermittent solar energy.”
This is again totally false. Where does it come from? Both activities, bakery and roasting are profitable.
“To enhance this storytelling, Arnaud is also misrepresenting his role in our company everywhere. For example, in a conference with APCC (Association des Professionnels en Climat Energie et Environnement), he showed a big Lytefire prototype made in India (picture below). Other team members were working on this project at Mr Desai’s Gandhian factory and the prototype was already completed when Arnaud visited. At that time, his contribution was a series of long discussions on the factory’s roof where our first prototype of that size was standing. He used the footage and concepts he captured to support his documentary film about sustainable energy solutions.”
This image comes from a slide I use in my conferences, related to my energy study trip. As indicated on the right side of the slide, this is the moment when I talk about my encounter with Lytefire in India. I do not mention any specific role in that particular project. This photo simply serves to illustrate the link with the Lytefire initiative, a project I later worked on for nearly 10 years — which also explains why we are still using two of these ovens at NeoLoco today.
For clarity, I completed a two-month internship on this oven, which was still in development at the time. Numerous photos document that period. Reducing this experience to mere rooftop discussions is inaccurate.
I would also add that Eva Wissenz, who made these claims, was not present in India during that time.
And contrary to what has been claimed elsewhere, the photo in question does not belong to Lytefire. Lytefire was one of 60 energy projects documented during this year-long study trip. All the photos on this slide are credited to Les Vagabonds de l’Énergie and come from projects visited during that study journey.
“Looking back, we notice the absence of any technical improvements by this former CTO during his job with us.”
The accusations made against me are not based on solid facts.
For several years, I contributed voluntarily to the project, driven by a strong belief in its value. Very few people would have committed to such an extent. On numerous occasions, Lytefire’s leadership personally expressed their appreciation for the skills I brought to the project. It is unfortunate that some of the challenges the company is currently facing are being blamed on former collaborators rather than being addressed responsibly.
The article published by Lytefire suggests that French partners who collaborated with the company acted against its core mission: to develop tools for artisans in developing countries, particularly in Africa.
This claim is inaccurate. The activities conducted in France were always part of the company’s overall strategy and were approved by its leadership. Lytefire itself endorsed these two complementary approaches — which made sense: developing solutions in Europe does not undermine efforts in Africa, quite the opposite. It fosters valuable exchanges of practices — exchanges I have personally experienced, which have benefited all involved, both in Africa and in France.
To now claim that Lytefire never aimed for anything beyond African artisan use, and that the project was misappropriated by some for personal gain amounts to rewriting history. The company, for example, developed two solar saunas for a ski resort in Switzerland — to my knowledge, without involvement from French actors. This clearly shows that Lytefire was also exploring other markets independently of local French initiatives.
Accusing people of misusing a tool is not only unfair, but counterproductive. We share the same challenges, the same planet, and the same sun. We must act wherever we can, with the resources we have, without opposing regions or commitments.
“To repeat, Lytefire is neither low-tech nor is it open source. We would like to be credited and referred to properly or not mentioned at all (and if you chose to not mention us, we ask us not to show us by picture or drawing without credits).”
After years of trying to handle tense situations constructively, I’ve decided to follow this advice: when possible, I will no longer ention the Lytefire brand.
I have done everything I could to meet Lytefire’s expectations. Those who know the full story understand the level of effort I put into maintaining that relationship — probably too much. Yet, it never seemed to be enough.
Lytefire might appreciate having its oven users constantly talk about the brand, but there’s a gap between that expectation and the reality on the ground. A bakery needs to focus on communicating about its own work, values, and mission — not about the brand of the tools it uses.
The Low Tech movement offers a meaningful approach to addressing the challenges of our time. It involves simplifying our tools so they are more robust, repairable, and accessible. This naturally requires rethinking how we produce, work, and organize ourselves.
Is perfectly acceptable to disagree with this vision. But that does not justify the hostility I’ve been subjected to, nor the attempts to silence those who express different views.
Lytefire is free to shape its own communication. However, this should not come at the expense of the users of its own technology. One may disagree with the deep changes we have implemented at NeoLoco. Yet, in the medium term, these transformations are likely to become necessary — whether by choice or by necessity.
As for me, I am among those working to prepare for this shift, alongside many others involved in the Low Tech movement in France. And others too.
Is that a reason for public disparagement? I don’t believe so.
Many initiatives identifying with Low Tech do so with the intent to move forward collectively — to share ideas, tools, and know-how. They do not deserve to be judged negatively.
Today, Low Tech has moved beyond amateurism. There are real, smart, and reliable solutions. Lytefire has every right to reposition its image. But there is no need to damage others’ reputations in the process.
Submitted by Arnaud Crétot
By Right to reply: Loïc Pérochon
VERSION FRANCAISE
Droit de réponse à l’article “Lytefire is unique. It is not for
activism” publié le 31 mars 2025 sur le site Lytefire.com —
transmis le 2 juin 2025
L’article publié le 31 mars 2025 sur le site lytefire.com, intitulé “Lytefire is unique. It is not for activism” et signé par Madame Eva Wissenz, comporte plusieurs inférences erronées et imputations trompeuses me concernant. L’article, bien qu’attribué à Madame Eva Wissenz, semble exprimer la position officielle de l’entreprise Solar Fire Concentration / Lytefire, dont elle est représentante. Afin de rétablir les faits, je souhaite exercer mon droit de réponse selon quatre axes principaux.
1. Sur l’intention initiale de notre collaboration avec Lytefire
Avec mes associés Arnaud, Élise, Maxence et Benoist, aujourd’hui membres de La Belle Tech, nous n’avons jamais eu l’ambition de “révolutionner le monde de la boulangerie”, comme l’article le laisse entendre. Notre intention, dans le cadre de notre collaboration avec Lytefire, était de tester et diffuser cette technologie en France, en accompagnant l’émergence de modèles d’usage pertinents et reproductibles dans un cadre local. Cette démarche était avant tout pragmatique, de terrain, expérimentale, et non idéologique.
2. Sur les concepts de “professionnalisation des low-tech” et “usine distribuée”
Contrairement à ce que suggère l’article, je n’ai jamais revendiqué l’invention de la professionnalisation des low-tech. Ce processus existe depuis longtemps, dans de nombreuses régions du monde. Lors de mes interventions publiques, je cite régulièrement des exemples d’économies robustes en Inde ou sur le continent africain, où les low-tech sont utilisées de manière professionnelle depuis des décennies.
S’agissant du concept d’usine distribuée, mes conférences incluent toujours une contextualisation claire. Avant de présenter notre modèle développé par La Belle Tech, je cite explicitement les structures qui nous ont inspirés : l’Atelier Paysan, Gazelle Tech, Amerma. C’est par exemple le cas lors de ma conférence du 9 janvier 2025 à Centrale Supélec (vidéo publique en ligne). Notre approche spécifique s’appuie sur le tissu des PME industrielles françaises, dans une logique de transformation sociale inclusive, sans hostilité envers l’existant.
Comme indiqué sur notre site : https://labelletech.fr/lusine-distribuee, notre modèle vise à "intégrer de façon harmonieuse l’industrie traditionnelle dans un nouveau modèle de production", en valorisant les savoir-faire ouvriers au service des besoins locaux. Il ne s’agit donc ni d’une rupture idéologique, ni d’un rejet de l’industrie, mais d’une transformation sociale coopérative.
3. Sur la qualification de la Lytefire comme technologie low-tech
L’article met en doute la légitimité de considérer la Lytefire comme une low-tech. Pourtant, selon les critères établis par l’ADEME, le Low-tech Lab ou des travaux académiques (sobriété, simplicité, réparabilité, accessibilité, etc.), la Lytefire répond, à bien des égards, à cette définition — notamment dans sa version artisanale, adaptée à des usages de proximité.
Il est donc légitime, dans un débat ouvert, de la considérer comme un exemple de low-tech professionnalisable dans un contexte français.
4. Sur les interprétations abusives ou imprécises de mes propos
Plusieurs affirmations contenues dans l’article reposent sur des extrapolations inexactes de mes propos publics. Je tiens à préciser :
Enfin, jerappelle que La Belle Tech est une initiative indépendante deLytefire, avec une vision clairement exposée sur notre site : https://labelletech.fr/vision. Nous défendons une approche ouverte, collaborative, et ancrée dans les territoires, au service des transformations sociales.
L’opposition entre “activisme” et “action concrète” n’a pas lieu d’être. Les deux sont, bien souvent, indissociables : c’est l’engagement citoyen qui permet aujourd’hui à de nombreuses solutions d’être visibles, testées et crédibles.
À titre d’exemple, voici une initiative concrète impulsée par La Belle Tech :
https://www.unapeietentreprises.fr/actualites/cet-esat-transforme-des-dechets-en-biochar-et-cree-un-impact-local-et-durable
Je vous demande de bien vouloir publier ce droit de réponse dans les conditions prévues par la loi, et vous remercie de contribuer ainsi à un débat serein, pluraliste et respectueux.
ENGLISH VERSION
Right of Reply to the article “Lytefire is unique. It is not for activism” published on March 31, 2025, on Lytefire.com — transmitted on June 2, 2025
I am writing under the right of reply following the publication on March 31, 2025, of the article entitled “Lytefire is unique. It is not for activism” on the website Lytefire.com, authored by Ms. Eva Wissenz. This article contains several inaccurate or misleading statements that concern me directly. In order to clarify the facts, I am responding under four main areas where errors, misinterpretations or distortions of my statements have occurred.
1. On the original purpose of the collaboration between members of today’s La Belle Tech and Lytefire
Together with my partners Arnaud, Élise, Maxence and Benoist, we never sought to “revolutionize the world of baking,” as the article suggests. Rather, our objective in collaborating with Lytefire was to experiment with and promote the use of the Lytefire technology in France, by supporting the emergence of locally appropriate, replicable usage models. This approach was rooted in pragmatic, field-based experimentation, not in grand ideological claims.
2. On the concepts of “professionalization of low-tech” and “distributed factory”
I have never claimed to have invented the concept of low-tech professionalization, which has long existed in many regions of the Global South. In my public talks, I frequently reference examples from robust economies in India and Africa where low-tech solutions are used professionally.
As for the idea of a distributed factory, I take care in my lectures to credit the pioneers who inspired us — L’Atelier Paysan, Gazelle Tech, Amerma — all of whom are presented prior to introducing the La Belle Tech model. This can be seen, for example, in my presentation at Centrale Supélec on January 9, 2025 (which is publicly available online).
At La Belle Tech, our specific contribution to this concept lies in our choice to build on the existing fabric of small and medium-sized French manufacturers (PMEs) in pursuit of a socially inclusive transformation, rather than proposing a radical rupture with traditional industry. As we clearly state on our website:
“This approach seeks to integrate traditional industry into a new, more open, visible and locally accessible production model. Serving the community socially enhances the value of local actors, especially skilled industrial workers and artisans. We believe social and environmental transformation will only succeed if it values these workers. Otherwise, we risk deepening an ideological divide between low-tech advocates (often engineers) and the working class. We advocate for a more democratic industry.”
[https://labelletech.fr/lusine-distribuee/]
3. On the classification of the Lytefire as a low-tech technology
The article questions whether the Lytefire can legitimately be considered a low-tech solution. Yet numerous well-respected sources — including ADEME, the Low-Tech Lab, and academic researchers in sustainable engineering — define low-tech by a set of criteria (such as simplicity, durability, repairability, and accessibility) that Lytefire clearly meets. In this light, I continue to see the Lytefire as a relevant and valuable example of a professional, adaptable low-tech system, particularly in its artisanal and locally repairable form.
4. On the misrepresentation of my statements
I regret that some of my public remarks have been misinterpreted as excessive or dismissive. I wish to make the following clarifications:
Finally, I reiterate that La Belle Tech is an entirely independent initiative, unaffiliated with Lytefire. Our mission is clearly explained on our website: [https://labelletech.fr/vision]. We are committed to an open, pragmatic and cooperative vision of appropriate technology, grounded in local experimentation and real-world needs.
The binary opposition drawn in the article between “activism” and “practical action” is both misleading and unhelpful. In practice, the two often go hand in hand. It is thanks to the dedication of citizens — including volunteers and activists — that many of today’s low-tech solutions have become known, tested and legitimized.
On-the-ground work, training, and local pedagogy are as much about action as they are about engagement. A good example is this recent project led by La Belle Tech:
[https://www.unapeietentreprises.fr/actualites/cet-esat-transforme-des-dechets-en-biochar-et-cree-un-impact-local-et-durable]
I respectfully request that this right of reply be published in accordance with applicable legal provisions, and in the interest of open and respectful public discourse.
Submitted by Loïc Pérochon