The fight against the greenhouse gas emissions has now taken an essential place in most developed countries and has become a major political challenge. European institutions are concerned and are the place where sometimes occur severe confrontations between the States. But that can lead to adopted positions or to decisions which have an opposed effect to the sought-after objectives. The total emissions generated by the production and the fossil fuels utilization, calculated with the integration of the methane and of the consequences of the natural gas flaring around oil fields, as each year BP evaluates them, show that the level in the European Union is low (3bnt) compared to the United States one (5.2bnt) and mainly to China (12bnt).
Climate warming comes from the accumulation during the years of these emissions. It is so necessary to put unto perspective the emissions of the developing countries as China, India or Indonesia which have only belatedly generated them when Western countries did it since the beginning of the industrial revolution. It is also advisable to compare the emissions to population. The Unites States then look like very bad pupils, as Canada, through emitting per inhabitant twice and half more than the European Union and near three times more than France. Inside the European Union, differences are also very important, especially between France and Germany.
The European legal regime indicates that the energy policies are under the sole power of the States, as for instance, direct taxes. It so belongs to them to take the appropriated measures to reach the adopted objectives at the Community level. This regime imposes that the production and the distribution of energy must be open to competition, even if that rule doesn’t apply to transportation infrastructures. That legal framework, with the markets liberalization and especially power one has been an aggravating factor of the energy crisis occurred after the Ukraine invasion by Russia, which, atop of that, has generated a rebound of the fossil fuels utilization.
From the 2010 years, it has by large been considered that to reduce the emissions generated by the power production, the solution was the development of renewables. Nuclear has been excluded. The Fukushima catastrophe, even if it was first a tsunami which has caused thousands of deaths, has given to several countries, with Germany in the first place, a good reason for stopping any project of construction of new power plants and for adopting a closing program of the existing power plants. That, in appearance, was not against the European objectives of reductions of CO2 emissions because the renewables, wind and solar farms, were supposed to replace them.
This choice was even ratified by France which announced in 2015 that the country was going to reduce the nuclear share in its power mix to 50% and that it renounced to build new plants. In the same time and under the pressure of its neighbor, the government was committing itself to close the two units of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant. A mechanism, imposed by Brussels, also compelled EDF to provide a substantial part of its nuclear production to its competitors at a price by large inferior to the market ones. The company, which had been the main contributor to France reduction of its CO2 emissions was itself under a double penalization. The lack of perspectives incited the highly qualified workforce to retraining and the financial situation and the technical know how were fragilized.
The authorized by Brussels supports which helped to finance the energy transition were excluding nuclear from their intervention scope. But solar and wind energies are by nature intermittent, what everybody knew. Their development required available production capacities in winter when nights were long and during summer when there was no wind. Without nuclear, it remained coal and natural gas power plants, what Brussels could not ignore. At the end, the German choice was not consisting in reducing its emissions but in consolidating its relationship with Moscow through more investments dedicated to increase its natural gas imports (North Stream 1 & 2) and to protecting the jobs in its coal mines which were localized in strategic lander in order the current coalition remains into power.
The crisis resulting from the sanctions taken against Russia has shown to which point the energy transition model imagined by Brussels to reduce the CO2 emissions was inefficient. Fossil fuels prices have exploded which has contributed to the triggering off of an unprecedent inflationist wave since the second oil shock. In France, it has been necessary to bring back into activity a coal power plant whose closing had been scheduled. It is highly likely that, in several countries, it has leaded to a rebound of greenhouse gas emissions.
But the main loser has been France, which, without looking for changing the direction, when it was still time,of the European positions, has weakened its nuclear production tool and even has, at the worst moment, closed a power plant. The delays in the maintenance operations caused by the pandemic and the appearance of corrosion phenomena in several plants have leaded to a fall of the available capacities, when, in the same time, EDF had to give, despite reduced capacities, a part of its production at a price without any relation with market one. A figure shows the size of the consequences: in 2021 the France electricity export surplus was 45 TWH. In 2022, its deficit was 15 TWH.
The decision to forbid from 2035 the sale of cars equipped with thermal engines risks also to have consequences quite so prejudicial. Approved by all the countries, it is now disputed by Germany, the first and by large vehicles producer. It is not guaranteed that the power increase which will result from that, will be ensured by production sources which will not emit CO2. The batteries production will represent a very important part of the cost of the vehicles. As that will need a lot of energy, if its production is not decarbonized, the interest of the measure will be reduced when its financial and human cost will be huge. At last, nothing allows to be sure that the essential raw materials supply safety will be ensured.
Two lessons would be drawn regarding the European choices about the reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions. The first one, it is to be sure of the permanent availability of both the energy production mode and the necessary raw materials when we know, the late experience shows it, that no State is ready to be confronted with a penury. The second one, it is that it is the whole production chain and the emissions which come from it which must be taken into consideration in the choices in favor of environment and not the final assembly.
It is an illusion to satisfy itself with an apparent reduction of the emissions if the power or the safety of the production of essential goods cannot be ensured. And it would be unwise to choice a power system which would lead to too much high prices in a world where international competition is becoming more intense and when the level of European and especially France emissions is very inferior to the level of its main competitors.