Can the energy transition succeed?

Europe’s goal for 2050 is to move towards a low-car­bon world. “Glob­al warm­ing is expect­ed to reach 1.5 degrees by 2030, and prob­a­bly over 3 degrees or even 3.5 degrees by 2100, so we’ll soon be at unman­age­able tem­per­a­tures,” says Olivi­er Sala, vice-pres­i­dent in charge of research and inno­va­tion at Engie. “The urgent sit­u­a­tion we face on cli­mate change means we can’t wait any longer. But after decades of cli­mate denial, we shouldn’t give in to despon­den­cy. We have a duty to be opti­mistic, and to take action.”

So how best to go about it? First­ly, by reduc­ing our ener­gy con­sump­tion at a Euro­pean lev­el by at least 30–50%. This requires poli­cies that encour­age ener­gy suf­fi­cien­cy. Sec­ond­ly, by switch­ing to elec­tric­i­ty for as many of our activ­i­ties as pos­si­ble, using decar­bonised, renew­able ener­gy sources such as wind and solar pow­er. Third­ly, the use of low-car­bon mol­e­cules, either of bio­log­i­cal ori­gin (food or agri­cul­tur­al waste, for exam­ple), or pro­duced from hydro­gen. Unlike hydro­gen pro­duced from hydro­car­bons, hydro­gen obtained from the elec­trol­y­sis of water is non-polluting.

“If we want emis­sions with zero car­bon foot­print, the CO₂ emit­ted must come from bio­genic sources, such as meth­a­niza­tion, a tech­nol­o­gy based on the break­down of organ­ic mat­ter by micro-organ­isms, under con­trolled con­di­tions and in the absence of oxy­gen,” con­tin­ues Olivi­er Sala. “Anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty is to cap­ture CO₂ from the air. Major invest­ments are being made in this tech­nol­o­gy, but they won’t bear fruit for at least anoth­er ten years.”

Which of these avenues is Engie pur­su­ing? They’re all inter­est­ing, but they need to be stud­ied togeth­er, because there won’t be a mir­a­cle solu­tion for decar­boniz­ing our emis­sions, but a vari­ety of tech­ni­cal solu­tions that need to be com­bined accord­ing to local sit­u­a­tions. The chal­lenge is also to strength­en Europe’s abil­i­ty to pro­cure the raw mate­ri­als need­ed to man­u­fac­ture com­po­nents (cobalt and lithi­um in par­tic­u­lar) and to encour­age indus­tri­al inno­va­tion in these new energies.

After Ger­many and Italy, France is the third-largest pro­duc­er of solar ener­gy, but solar pow­er only accounts for 3% of French ener­gy con­sump­tion, so there’s plen­ty of room for growth in this sec­tor. This can be achieved not only by mul­ti­ply­ing the num­ber of pho­to­volta­ic pan­els, but also by diver­si­fy­ing the sur­faces on which they can be installed, and of course by improv­ing their per­for­mance. Jor­di Badosa, Research Direc­tor at École Poly­tech­nique (IP Paris) and Tech­ni­cal Direc­tor of the Cen­tre Inter­dis­ci­plinaire Energie4Climate (E4C), is work­ing on this very subject.

At the SIRTA atmos­pher­ic research obser­va­to­ry, he is devel­op­ing exper­i­men­tal instru­men­tal plat­forms to test con­di­tions that are more or less favor­able to pho­to­volta­ic pan­el ener­gy pro­duc­tion. The aim is to deploy solar ener­gy on a mas­sive scale across a dis­trict or city.

New avenues are being explored, such as agri-voltaics, which involves com­bin­ing solar ener­gy pro­duc­tion with agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion. Instal­la­tions are being test­ed above crops that need lit­tle sun­light (par­tic­u­lar­ly let­tuce), with pan­els that can be adjust­ed to let in more or less light depend­ing on the time of day and the time of year. In the event of drought, such pan­els can also pro­tect the soil from evap­o­ra­tion. Lakes would also be good places to install solar pan­els, because the warmer they are, the less ener­gy they pro­duce. Float­ing, they ben­e­fit from a nat­ur­al cool­ing effect. 

Sig­nif­i­cant progress has also been made in recy­cling the var­i­ous mate­ri­als that make up pho­to­volta­ic pan­els, which are now 90% recy­clable – an essen­tial fac­tor when con­sid­er­ing sus­tain­able technologies.

The issue of the inter­mit­ten­cy of solar ener­gy remains. But in addi­tion to the research being car­ried out on stor­age, Jor­di Badosa agrees with Olivi­er Sala that the future lies in an ener­gy mix that includes solu­tions based on green hydrogen. 

Final­ly, if the ener­gy tran­si­tion is to suc­ceed, “these ener­gies will have to be not only accept­ed but, above all, desired by con­sumers”, con­cludes Olivi­er Sala.

Marina Julienne