“Nuclear” or “wind”? The Internet user will not find any occurrence of these words in the public consultation posted on November 2 by the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Until mid-February 2022, this allows anyone who wishes to answer a series of questions relating to the future French Energy and Climate Strategy – the SFEC, according to its acronym.
The head of state, Emmanuel Macron, announced it November 9: “We are going (…) to relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors in our country”. Five months before the presidential election, the public consultation intends yet to free oneself from the sometimes binary debate between nuclear power and renewable energies. Its twelve themes, developed upstream, are mainly supposed to nourish reflection before the future energy-climate programming law. A text to be adopted before 1er July 2023, still with a view to achieving carbon neutrality in 2050.
More than a year after the proposals of the Citizen’s Climate Convention – rarely repeated identically for the climate and resilience law of August 2021 -, the first of the twelve parts of the consultation echoes a current discussion: “What balance between recourse to energy sobriety and recourse to new technologies? ” By “sobriety”, understand various “Behavioral levers” involving lifestyle changes. For example, the pursuit of an evolution “From diets to less meaty diets”, a “Drop of 1 ° C in the average heating temperature of homes”, or a “Development of teleworking, carpooling, soft mobility” Where “The circular economy (fewer new products, choice of better quality products and repairability)”.
A question of balance
A recent report could feed this social debate. On October 25, the national manager of the Electricity Transmission Network (RTE) published its main lessons regarding “Energy futures” of the country by 2050. Six scenarios foreshadow the future of the electricity system with or without new nuclear reactors. They start from the premise that overall energy consumption could already drop by 40% without being sober, but with, in particular, the renovation of buildings or more efficient devices.
This overall reduction would, however, be accompanied by an increase in electricity consumption: + 35% terawatt-hours compared to today’s energy mix. Without going into them as much, RTE indicates two other hypotheses to be taken into consideration: that of sobriety would correspond to a smaller increase (+ 15%), unlike that of deep reindustrialisation (+ 60%).
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