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AB 2000 studies

Alain Boublil Blog

 

The ecology and the essential challenges for France

It is always difficult to achieve two different objectives in the same time, a green France, as an example for the whole world and a re-industrialized France to get back full employment and energy independence. But the past action in the nuclear power production and the one, today decided in Brussels, supported by Paris, regarding car industry, provide good examples of what it must not to be done if we want to reach these two objectives, along with being conscient of the real France weight in this essential stake which is the fight against climate warming.

It exists four major emissions zones, China, the Unites States, The European Union and India. In 2020, the emissions volumes of these zones were respectively 13.5, 4.8, 3.2 and 3.0 Gigatons. During thirty years, they had been multiplied by four in China and doubled in India when they were reduced by 15% in the U.S. and by 35% in Europe, the last figure being overestimated due to the exit from statistics of the United Kingdom after the Brexit. A 28 % fall would better correspond to the reality. If these emissions are measured per inhabitant, they were 9.6 t. in China, 14.5 t. in the U.S. and 2.2 t. in India. They would strongly increase in this country in the future which has started a growth period which will maybe be comparable to what has achieved China these last decades.

So France contribution, with about 350 million tons in 2020, is very low, if not neglectable regarding the world scale. If a voluntarist action is indisputable to testifying its commitment toward the planet, and to convince other countries, much more polluting, to follow that way, the measures to be adopted must be in proportion of the true stakes and not harming the achievements of the other objectives of the economic policy. The analysis of the past decisions and of the next projects shows that we are very far from having answered to these legitimate duties.

The electricity crisis which hurt the country with a production fall, the reopening of a coal power plant and the recourse to imports at the worst time is the consequence of 25 years of mistakes. After the Tchernobyl catastrophe, France and Germany associated themselves to conceive a new reactor model with which such an accident would be impossible. The EPR was certified in the middle of the Nineties. The Jospin government, which had yet given gages to its ecologist allies inside the plural left with the closure of the Creys-Maleville sur-generator nuclear power plant, should have taken the opportunity to ask EDF to ordering this new reactor. So would have been preserved inside its suppliers the indispensable know-hows.

It has not been done. Framatome, renamed Areva, will take then an opportunity in Finland but the spectrum of that contract was above its competences because the purpose was to build the full plant and not only the nuclear reactor, what it never did before. It will be needed to wait for several more years EDF orders its first EPR. A company which has nor received orders for fifteen years wouldn’t be able to achieve what has been ordered with the concluded delays and prices. It is what has happened in Flamanville. The situation of the power production in France has been, atop of that, made worse by the project to reduce the nuclear power share to 50%, which has restrained the investments dedicated to the increase of the life duration of the existing power plants. To crown it all, under the pressure of the French and German ecologists, it has been decided to close the Fessenheim power plant. Some months later Russia was invading Ukraine, fossil fuels prices exploded, France became an electricity importer and the State had to spend billions to instrduce a tariff protection and to protect French people purchasing power and enterprises survival, power prices being connected due to an European regulation France had validated, to natural gas price.

A 180° turnaround has just occurred and a new program of nuclear plants construction has been launched. If that had been decided 10 years ago, France would have been protected against the consequences of the current crisis, and its competitiveness as the situation of its public finances would have been, inside the European Union, strengthened. The pressure of the ecologist movements have leaded to the opposite result from what was looked for. The CO2 emissions connected with the power plants production rebounded with the reopening of the coal power plants. A situation quite also alarming risks to occur with the interdiction by the European institutions of the sale of thermal motor cars from 2035.

Electric vehicle has not convinced customers despite the big assistances given by the States. During the 2020 3rd quarter, they represent only 11.9% of the registrations in Europe. The costs, despite the subventions, and the low autonomy of these vehicles do not correspond to customers expectations. The development of hybrid vehicles was encouraged to be used as a transition solution, but it was, regarding environment, a wrong good idea because they have the defects of the two categories of vehicle. The batteries production needs a lot of energy and when they use their thermal engines, they consume more fuels. In front of these failures, Europe has only found one solution, the prohibition. The dedicated institutions have validated this decision but they do not seem to have taken the lessons of the Germany dependance to Russian natural gas. This time, it is not about Moscow but about Beijing, and about a geological and industrial reality.

China produces or controls the production of raw materials indisputable to batteries, rare earths and special minerals as cobalt and lithium. Tensions between the country and the United States seem not near to soften. Let’s imagine that after an invasion of Taiwan similar sanctions as these that have been adopted against Russia are decided. They will affect strategic components for the car industry. Consequences would be much heavier than about the Russian natural gas because, in this case, there are no alternative sources.

Bur, regarding European car producers, the worst is not there because their Chinese competitors have an advantage: lower costs, and a larger market. They have known how to fulfill their clients for a long time. Their participation to the Paris Saloon let no doubts about their willingness to enter the European market when customers won’t be anymore able to buy car with a thermal engine. No custom protection will be possible because China will have a dominant position in the supply of the battery strategic components. The European car industry will be taken into a stranglehold. Upward, it will depend from Beijing. And downward, it will have to face the competitions of the Chinese car manufacturers which, them, will always have access to these components in good conditions.

Germany fell into the Russian natural gas trap. What is at stake regarding climate warming in the electric motorization in Europe is derisory compared to today United States, China and tomorrow India emissions. Let’s hope, before it will be too late, that these real points will be taken into consideration and that our industry will not fall into the compulsory electric vehicles trap when it exists a lot of other ways to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions as the replacement by nuclear ones of the coal power plants. It is them which must be forbidden in 2035. 

   

                 

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