He deserves to be better known by international audiences. Here are some of his talks in english:
i love how rude, physics based and down to earth he is, a legend indeed!
Énergie Nucléaire was a thing of De Gaulle, but not for these reasons. France needed independence and needed to provide electricity, and the only way was nuclear (at the time).
Given the current situation, I think France didn't do too bad. Only one candidate in France on par with Jancovici tho, Fabien Roussel.
I live in France, never heard of this "Net Zero" you're talking about.
Ok ok, De Gaulle was maybe more concerned about energy independence.
France doesn't do too bad? Any link? As far a i remember only a few African countries do "not too bad", but perhaps you were referring to former colonies as well.
> I live in France, never heard of this "Net Zero" you're talking about.
I then suggest some good climate information channel, Bon Pote is pretty good in French [0]
edit: my country is terrible too, it is nothing against France in particular!!!
True, and it's not a exception, but geographically "luck", without mountains and the glaciers that comes with them, Switzerland would be as dry as Turkmenistan. It's just a matter of commonsense to use those altitude differences and water....but when all our glaciers are molten away, we for sure have to go back to nuclear-power.
> but when all our glaciers are molten away, we for sure have to go back to nuclear-power.
this is inaccurate. you might want to go read more literature related to ice melting and energy transition.
https://www.thelocal.ch/20170217/swiss-study-snow-to-largely...
https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2018/02/no-...
>In an initial phase, climate change will actually cause the runoff to increase, as water stored as ice is released. However, if the glacier becomes too small, it will reach a tipping point, which we call “peak water”.
>Our study highlights the “hot spots” where retreating glaciers will cause water shortages in future.
But hey maybe you know some other mysterious ways water is stored in in mountains.
Wind and solar take a lot of space that could be used for agriculture, so they compete with important uses of the soil. (I don't know if it's clear how much offshore is a thing, but I suppose this increases also energy expenditure)
Both solar and wind provide a significant net reduction of CO2 when you take into account their production. Long term, materials in solar and wind can be re-used. So you would need to mine them only once. Currently, mining is just too cheap to effectively recycle all metals.
Wind doesn't takes hardly any space. Wind is not compatible with airfields and residential areas, but that's about it. Wind mixes perfectly fine with argiculture.
Due to you people complaining about wind in their neighborhood, there is now a lot of wind at sea. The good thing about offshore wind is that typically there is more wind at sea. So the construction cost is higher, but the production is higher as well.
For solar it is more an issue of price. Putting solar on a field is cheap. To some extent putting solar on a field is good for nature. An undisturbed area with shadow is quite nice for small plants, insects, etc.
The potential for solar in urban areas is enormous, but often not cheap. For example, existing roofs of large building are not strong enough for lots of solar.
Solar can also be mixed with smaller scale argiculture.
Sorry but that statement is absolutely true, even of Switzerland.
As I write, France's consumption-based carbon intensity is 92g, Switzerland is 130 (importing 2.36GW of dirty electricity from Germany, 1.44GW from France)
Hydro isn't the panacea. It's destroying ecosystems. Climate change is a problem but the biodiversity collapse another one.
https://eu.patagonia.com/fr/en/stories/telling-the-dam-truth...
i was just replying to a comment saying that nuclear is cleaner
Switzerland in an anomaly on virtually every metrics you can come by.
We’re all a bit jealous of course.
But little correction: During the Night IN Wintertime
Saying that France is great is brutally inaccurate tho.
A rough estimate is that the production of electricity needs to double.
I'm curious how France is going to double the production of electricty. The current plans for new nuclear power don't seem enough to increase capacity and retire old plants at the same time.
I think it is getting better, though. Environmentalists are slowly waking up to the fact that nuclear energy is not nearly as bad as we make it out to be, even compared to windmills & solar panels, which requires many more times the ground surface and/or concrete.
Oh, and we got a recent report from our national energy company (or something close), that laid out several plans to reduce our CO2 emissions, and most contingencies involved both nuclear and renewable, including the "nuke max" scenario. We'll definitely need renewables, but it's pretty clear shutting down nuclear plants is one of the riskiest plans — hopefully our politicians will wake up to that.
> Oh, and we got a recent report from our national energy company (or something close), that laid out several plans to reduce our CO2 emissions, and most contingencies involved both nuclear and renewable, including the "nuke max" scenario. We'll definitely need renewables, but it's pretty clear shutting down nuclear plants is one of the riskiest plans — hopefully our politicians will wake up to that.
Great. Hope they don't forget what scientists say: we must use much less energy.
There is no scenario where a comparable wind or solar farm requires more concrete than a nuclear plant. Not even close. A modern nuclear plant requires hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of concrete (ie: over a million tonnes), as well as hundreds of thousands of tonnes of steel.
Yes, a solar farm may require more land surface area, but it can be very quickly and easily deconstructed and removed when no longer required. Where as decommissioning a nuclear plant can cost tens of billions of Euros, and can take 60 years or more to complete.
You want to be renewable only? Then you need to install several times the power output you need, and enough energy storage to have your energy at will: dams, batteries… This is going to cost a lot.
Also, shutting down a nuke plant takes about a minute, then you need very little water to keep it cool. Completely dismantling it takes much longer of course, but it takes so little surface compared to its energy output that you might as well just leave it there to rot.
Not as bad as the Germans. The decision to build new nuclear plants is one thing, but to close down perfectly good and safe existing nuclear in the name of the environment is madness.
Especially when the alternative to those nuclear plants is to burn more lignite coal and build new pipelines to import more Russian natural gas.
seems like an extraordinary number
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-021-00225-6
[1] https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/
[2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/long-term-climate-change-...
How did CO2 become such a big focus?
Seemingly to detriment of all else, including persistent pollutants or neonics, etc? Like those very real problems happening today, vs 2100.
French government is not a shareholder of Total at any meaningful level, less than 30% of Total shareholders are French and Total is a multinational paying taxes in multiple countries, so I don't know from where your petrodollars are coming from.
There is a lot that can be say about French energy policy but mentioning Total is really the less relevant one...
Just as an example, the best performing company this year is Total with 15B and which is happily feeding the government with petrodollars and the other people with lies about "Net Zero " etc.
"Énergie Nucléaire" as they call it is a thing there because De Gaulle wanted a bomb after WW2, so they pushed the industry (which is btw in pretty bad shape).
There is exactly ONE person in France who is pro nuclear and say accurate things about climate and it's Jancovici. All the rest of the crowd is like in most countries corrupt by petrodollars or other polluting industry, and is saying crap about climate. and the rare times they are not saying crap they are lying about their intentions.
No, France is nowhere near serious about climate, like most countries they bet on a +5 degree futur. I think i have read enough papers to tell you that 5 degrees will be very very hot and a very very sad point in human history.