“Energy advances have always been made primarily for economic reasons”

Lhe situation is serious, and the outlook bleak. Time is running out before the point of no return and chaos. In any case, this is what many say when the subject of the energy transition is broached.

However, being a lucid entrepreneur invested in “cleantech” [technologies propres] gives a different view of reality. The seriousness and complexity of the issues should not prevent lucid optimism. Because, far from a blind faith in technology and science, it is history that brings us back to measure and reason.

Indeed, if the energy and existential crisis that we are going through is of unprecedented intensity, it is nonetheless a new replica of the recurring shocks that our world is experiencing in terms of energy. Wind and water mills thus allowed, until the end of the 18th^e century, European industry to produce flour, paper and… weapons. At this date, almost all the waterfalls in France are equipped.

In England, it was the growing needs for energy that caused, in the 17^e and XVIII^e centuries, a serious shortage of wood and the emergence of coal, first to replace wood in chimneys, blast furnaces and glass furnaces and then to replace dams, thanks to the steam engine. It was also the oil crisis of 1973 – and the sharp rise in oil prices – which led to nuclear power replacing oil in our country. Nuclear power would not have experienced such development without this crisis.

Cost, storage, externalities

In reality, energy advances have always been made primarily for economic reasons. The energy transition that we are all calling for is no exception to this rule. It will happen if the economic conditions of a CO2-free power generation market₂ and energy efficiency come together. It will succeed if it is technological, liberal and regulated by visionary policies.

On a human scale, the available energy is unlimited. Between the sun, the wind, geothermal energy, fossil fuels or nuclear power, the problem is not the scarcity of energy. The problem is that of its cost of production, its storage and its externalities. Energy is not free.

It costs capital and labor. To produce energy, it is therefore necessary to mobilize capital, to have human resources as well as market conditions allowing the production to be sold. The question is primarily economic and not physical.

You have 59.04% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.