2023-05-03 09:30:13
Lhe climate emergency and the need to do without fossil fuels are no longer debated. If we want to limit global warming to an increase of 2°C, or even 1.5°C, by the end of the century, we will have to eliminate oil, natural gas and coal from our consumption by 2050. , which in France represent around two-thirds of our final energy consumption, despite electricity being mainly produced by nuclear and hydraulic power. Moreover, since the invasion of Ukraine, everyone has been able to see to what extent doing without these fossil fuels is a climatic as well as a geostrategic issue.
To fulfill this noble strategic and climate ambition, France has set itself, among other objectives, to reduce our final energy consumption by at least 40%, to achieve a consumption of 930 TWh in 2050, a level equivalent to that of the 1970s. , which did not fail to draw criticism as to the desirability of this drop. However, does reducing our consumption by the same amount imply going back to the lifestyles of that time? Certainly not, because we would be living on this horizon in a housing stock that is better insulated and with reinvented mobility, thus freeing us from individual thermal mobility and the hundreds of kilometers of traffic jams caused each day, not to mention air pollution.
Moreover, these 40% savings mask a physical reality that seems to escape some engineers and observers worried regarding returning to the stone age: it is a question of reasoning on a final energy objective, that is to say integrating the energy savings that will be achieved by the sole electrification of our society. Because electrifying reduces our final consumption: switching to electric vehicles and replacing the three million oil heaters in France with heat pumps might represent a saving of 10% of our final energy.
Better performance
It is the one we use directly for our needs, such as lighting or heat for heating. It is directly usable without additional transformation, unlike primary energy (for example crude oil) which must be converted into secondary energy (like gasoline which comes from oil), itself having to be converted into final energy (like in propulsion from gasoline to allow the vehicle to move forward). Therefore, for physical reasons, using energy in electrical form rather than in thermal form reduces our final consumption.
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