2023-11-22 17:56:44
The French energy system will experience an unprecedented revolution. In less than thirty years, everything must change: no more oil and gas imports, make way for solar panels, wind turbines and bioenergy. No more petrol stations and oil boilers, make way for electric vehicles, cycle paths and heat pumps. A large part of the current nuclear fleet will be shut down due to its aging, and new reactors may have started operating.
It’s simple: almost all of the installations that will produce energy in 2050 do not exist today. But is this radical transformation absolutely necessary? And inevitable?
Yes, if we want to fight against climate change, respect our commitments and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. To do this, we must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. However, the energy sector is responsible for around 80% of these emissions. Fossil fuels, the cause of the climate crisis, now represent around 60% of our energy consumption.
To move away from coal, oil and gas, the transformation must be complete. It must start now, and the next ten years will be particularly decisive.
1 – WHY THE FUTURE WILL BE ELECTRIC
To “decarbonize”, there is now consensus on one path, in France but also on a global scale: we must “electrify” uses. Replace thermal cars with electric vehicles, gas boilers with heat pumps, coal-fired blast furnaces with electric ovens.
“Electrification is one of the most important strategies to reduce emissions from the energy sector”says the International Energy Agency.
Today 2030 2035 2050
Thermal renewable energies and waste
Hydrogen produced from electricity
Final consumption
1 600 TWh
Electricity has, in fact, several advantages: it is more efficient than fossil fuels, it can be used in most sectors and it is easy to decarbonize.
Although it seems omnipresent in our daily lives, it actually only represents a quarter of our energy consumption. This share will significantly increase: it could represent 35% of consumption from 2030, according to the manager of the Electricity Transmission Network (RTE), and more than 55% in 2050.
This electrification is already underway: in 2022, 13% of new vehicles sold were electric, compared to less than 2% in 2019, and sales of heat pumps increased by 30% compared to 2021. But the road is still long : electric cars today represent 1% of the automobile fleet, and if the government lists around 2.6 million air-water heat pumps, France also has some 12 million homes heated by gas and 3 million by oil.
You have 75% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#radically #transform #energy #system