If there is one point about which everybody agrees, it is that to ensure the energetic transition, the power needs will significantly increase in the coming decades. The priority given to electric vehicles, in Europe as in China, will generate a rise of the electricity consumption. It will be the same regarding heating. The restrictions imposed to reduce the number of boilers using fuel or coal will automatically provoke the transfer toward electric heating for the homes or the buildings which are not connected to natural gas networks. We could add the society digitization which is also a factor of the consumption increase.
At last, in many industrial sectors, the dictates regarding the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions will lead the enterprises every time it is possible, to look for getting rid of the fossil fuels to have recourse to electricity. But and everybody also agrees on that, it is that the power production must be de-carbonized. If not, the accomplished efforts will have been useless. The alternative sources put forward the most frequently, are renewables. But they are intermittent. And the recent crisis has shown it, and that has caused the rapid price rises, to which point the power availability is indispensable to our societies.
It is so proper to have at disposal a park of power plants able at any time to fulfill the needs. It can be done with hydraulic plants which present three advantages: they do not emit greenhouse gas, they can store power and at last they can operate at any time. But the number of sites in Europe is limited and when we see the social movements occurred in France when it was decided to create pools to protect irrigation of the agricultural production which needs it, we imagine the protests which could be triggered if were launched new construction projects of dams.
The second solution to be protected against renewables intermittency is nuclear. But that technology has aroused violent contests which have even given birth to political parties called sometimes as a reinforcement to constitute political majorities. It was the case in France with the Jospin government in 1997 and in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel one and even today with the social democrats.
The refusal of the nuclear technology and the lack of hydraulic capacities have so leaded the countries to keep in operation the fossil fuels power plants, mainly coal and later natural gas. When they have not at their disposal enough of these resources, that put themselves under foreign dependance for a strategic good. We have just seen the consequences for Germany which has had to deprive itself of the natural gas coming from Russia. Through the quest for other sources, that has provoked a rapid rise of the prices which has been transferred, due to a European regulation, about which we hardly understand the logic, to power prices.
The main lesson of the energetic crisis Europe has just endured is that the renewables do not constitute the answer to all the problems in the same time. But one essential point has been concealed: the capacity, or not, of the grids and of the power networks to cope with the immediate changes in the power production mix. Power plants, in the past, and whatever was the production mode, have been built in function of their clients needs. Two characteristics have been determining, their size and so their production capacity, and their localization. Which had done the success of fuel and of coal was the easiness with which these energies were carried to the plants.
The nuclear power plants fuel supply was not rising more problems. To the opposite, their acceptation by the local populations was a determining factor. The less there were sites, the less it could have contests. It is what explains the continuous increase of the reactor capacity, which went in France from 900 Mw to 1550 Mw and of the number of reactors on each site. The localizations had also been determined regarding the market situation to limit the scope of the grids. The concentration in the North of France and around the Rhone valley was explained by the needs of the industries implanted in these regions and by the density of the local population.
The situation is different regarding renewables. Their localization is determined by their exposure to wind for the windfarms and to the sun for solar panels. But there is no correlation between their localization and market needs. Germany has made the proof of it. Very important windfarms capacities have been put into operation in the North of the country but the most important consumers are located in the South. Populations hostility has still not allowed to building the high voltage lines which are necessary to send there the produced power.
The grids too will have to take into account the new consumption and production areas. The generalization, expected from 2035, of the electric vehicles will impose the creation of a network of recharging points in the places, like highways areas, which are devoid of them today. If we want recharging to be fast, which will be indispensable the days of heavy traffic, several thousands of kilometers of new lines with big capacities, will have to be built. To the opposite, the network will have to show flexibility when installations of solar panels on houses or buildings will start during the day to produce.
To reach the objectives the European Union has assigned to it, it must succeed in reconciling three contradictory demands: to cope with a strong increase of power demand (in Brussels, they talk about 60% until 2030), to modify the power mix to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and to guarantee for any place in the territories the electricity supply. In addition to the production investments to satisfy demand, the grid and the distribution networks will have to be adapted. Two models are facing to each other, the French one and the German one. The lesson of these last two years shows that the first one has failed and that the second one, despite the stoppage at the worst time of several nuclear plants due to technical reasons, has brought the proof of its ability to guarantee the country supply. France, for the last three months, even became a large power net exporter.
Instead of weakening the French model, through a reform of the power market, the Commission would do better in recognizing its ability to answer to the energetic transition challenge and to reduce again its emissions in order to reach the ambitious objective of zero net emissions in 2050. For lack of that, France will have to recover its full sovereignty in the power sector and to adopt its own regulations favoring the nuclear sector and allowing to guaranteeing the growth of a de-carboned production and to financing the adaptation of the grid and of the distribution network.
The challenges to which is confronted the power sector are by large under-estimated, especially in Brussels and in particular the role of the grid. Instead of playing with rivalries between countries, the Commission would admit realities, fix long-term credible objectives and get the support of the States which have brought the proof that they were able to achieve them.