The coming international meetings dedicated to the fight against climate warming and especially the Glasgow conference which will occur in September would lead to significant progresses in the taking into conscience of the stakes because the political leaders of the two most important emitters, the United States and China, have confirmed their commitments in that way and have taken the energy transition as one of their priorities. It is in that context that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published a long report on the tools to put into practice to reach the Net Zero objective in 2050.

Unfortunately, this report ignores one of the good sense major rules: excess in everything is a fault. Its conclusions present themselves as the result of radical choices, determined in advance and not as the compared evaluation of different options which would allow the political decision-makers to offering the indispensable elements for them to take their decisions. IAE first makes the bet that innovations which are underlying its reasoning will deliver expected results which has still to be proved. Then its report is giving a miss about the reception these innovations will be received by economic agents, which is the condition of their put into practice. The selected scenario is passing under silence the social consequences in every country of the disruptions it is going to create and seems to ignore the geopolitical stakes of a radical recombining of the conditions of the fossil fuels production. Now that sector has been for a century at the center of international political and economic tensions.

So, in order to the energy transition is achieved, it is necessary that the technological innovations results, on which it lies, are guaranteed and, especially, that the economic agents modify their choices and their behaviors in the expected direction. But these ones show very different characteristics and objectives from one country to another. What have in common a Chinese peasant who cooks his food with charcoal (they are hundreds of millions) and an executive who lives in Manhattan? Can we make the hypothesis that the Indian government will inscribe its action in the same development and energy utilization logic than the Benelux countries? So the IAE report ignores these differences to lead to a global scenario.

It starts from the principle that the unique solution is a virtually disappearance of the utilization of fossil fuels, may be to write off its past positions which went in the exact opposite direction. So coal use would have disappeared in 2050 and natural gas and oil consumption would have respectively fallen by 55% and 75%. Under these conditions, the net-zero objective will be reached. But we cannot make the confusion between the initial hypothesis and the result. Nothing in the IEA report allows us to be convinced that consumptions will fall in that proportion, despite the many quoted restrictions related to coal-fired power plants, transportation and building rules.

The transformation calendar is impressive, whatever it is about buildings isolation which would reach 85% of the world real estate properties in 2050, about the accelerated abandon of gasoline or diesel motors with 60% of electric vehicles sales in 2030 (they have represented less than 8% in 2020), about the closure of all natural gas or coal power plants from now to 2030 in every eveloped countries and 70% of the power production made by wind and solar panels in 2050. But nothing is said about the economic and political feasibility of this calendar and even less on its technical credibility.

The main contradiction in the Agency report lies in the mutation toward the all-electric model when the production is mainly provided by solar and wind farms. Between 2020 and 2050, nuclear share will fall from 10% to 8% and the hydraulic one from 17 to 12%, when power consumption grows from 27 000 to 71 000 Twh, i.e. a 150% increase. IAE doesn’t ignore that solar and wind energy are intermittent and that the supply safety is a major preoccupation for the States as have testified the incidents occurred due to the cold wave in Texas this winter or the worries generated by this month pipe-line hacking which provides the U.S. North-East.

The bet which is made is that the new digital and storing technologies will allow to coping with that major handicap. But nothing allows to be sure about that. In order an innovation delivers the expected results, it must first occur and then it is politically and economically accepted by these who will be in charge to put it into practice and by these who will use the related goods and services. That makes a lot of “if”. Atop of that the all-renewable power choice supposes huge investments in the networks and in the grids as in the putting into exploitation of the new mines to extract minerals which will be necessary to produce materials used in the batteries. About that precise issue, there too, consequences on environment are underestimated. So it can occur that remedies are worse than the harm.

These political choices will lead to power price increases. In the same time, the States will lose the fiscal receipts from production and consumption of fossil fuels, which will lead to tax increases. Who can seriously imagine that governments will be able to assume such so unpopulameasures and won’t have to give in, in front of people pressure, as it was the case in France with the “yellow shirts” revolt?

The essential point of the energy transition process described by the IAE lies on technological bets and heavy investments when differences from one State or one continent to another are huge. In order to succeed in the energy transition, a global vision must be abandoned and “on measure” solutions must be privileged, each country being committed to convince its partners that what it has put into practice has delivered significant results.

In France, for instance, trucks emit ten times more CO2 than planes. Despite that, we see a strong mobilization in favor of the limitation of air transportation when, after the disastrous episode of digital gantries which have cost to the country more than one billion euro, nothing is any more envisioned to favor rail transportation for goods. It is even forecast to close some lines. The billions included in the French and in the European rebound Plans could be usefully employed to develop a green logistic, merging rail for long distances and for the last kilometers trucks which could be without difficulties converted to electric. So we would achieve huge savings both in the construction of recharging points and in their alimentation through the grid.

In order to the energy transition stops to be a communication element, now recuperated by international organizations after having been a central point of the political message, it is necessary that the taken decisions are pragmatic and concerted. In order to change behaviors, it is necessary that the actors are convinced that it is in their interest. So it is not the reports or the hazardous technological bets which will change the world but the daily behavior of the economic agents that their political leaders will have successfully made them evolving.