French President-Elect Macron Urges Action On Climate Change (newsweek.com)

After Sunday's election in France, Macron's victory "is likely to be a boon for the French digital economy and its startup scene," writes a foreign policy think tank blog, "but the country's frosty relationship with U.S. tech companies is likely to remain over the next five years." Yet even before he was elected as France's new president, Emmanuel Macron was already warning the U.S. that withdrawing from the international Paris Climate change agreement could cost America its brightest innovators. Thelasko writes: French President elect Emmanuel Macron has a message to U.S. scientists and engineers working on climate change. "Please, come to France. You are welcome. It's your nation. We like innovation. We want innovative people. We want people working on climate change, energy renewables and new technologies. France is your nation."
Newsweek reports this week that without America's involvement, the Paris Climate agreement "will have no way of meeting its goals of reducing global net carbon emissions" -- but that Macron could persuade the U.S. to honor its agreement. ("It reportedly took just one phone call conversation between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the president for Trump to reconsider withdrawing entirely for NAFTA, another international agreement signed into law prior to his tenure in the Oval Office.") And in the meantime, Macron has also promised not to cut France's energy-research budget, and will even reinforce it "to accelerate our initiative."

Comments

The scientists are talking, who is listening?

[Mr D from 63]

The French Academy of Sciences has determined significant CO2 reduction is not feasible if France if they reduce nuclear. Here is a copy of a summary with some translated excerpts;

France cannot achieve a significant reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases from electricity production while also reducing the share of nuclear in its energy mix, the country's Academy of Sciences says.

"Simple common sense leads one to conclude that production of electricity that can meet the country's needs requires the availability of 'on demand' energies, which do not suffer from intermittency and which can be called upon at all times," it said. This means, in the absence of energy storage solutions, significant use will need to be made of thermal and nuclear power plants if France is to increase its use of renewable energy.

Nuclear power last year accounted for 13% of electricity production in Germany, which decided in 2011 to phase out its use of this form of energy. In 2010, nuclear power had accounted for 22%. The academy noted that, even though renewable energy accounted for 30% of power production last year, the share of fossil fuels was unchanged at 55% because Germany has had to open new fossil fuel plants to provide the back-up required for intermittent renewable energy. Germany thus remains one of Europe's largest CO2 emitters.

France, through its high dependence on nuclear energy, is one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita: about half as much as Germany. France produces around 540 TWh of electricity with emissions of 46 million tonnes CO2 per year, compared with Germany, which produces about 631 TWh from 334 million tonnes.

"Nuclear energy is objectively the most effective way to reduce the share of fossil fuels in the production of electrical energy," it said. "Within this general framework, there is a real contradiction in wanting to reduce emissions whilst reducing the share of nuclear power. In fact, many studies show that the total share of renewable energy cannot exceed 30-40% without leading to an exorbitant cost of electricity and the emission of greenhouse gases."

The academy said "realistic and coherent" scenarios show that it is impossible to have an energy system based wholly on renewable energy sources, which also "indicate a reasonable trajectory towards an energy solution where nuclear power will have its place in the coming decades".

In February, the French Nuclear Society issued a white paper stating the country needs to maintain its nuclear power generation capacity in order to raise the share of electricity from renewables without increasing the cost of electricity production.

http://www.academie-sciences.f...