[article]
| Titre : |
How to tell the story of change and transition of the energy, ecological and societal systems |
| Type de document : |
texte imprimé |
| Auteurs : |
Jean-Pierre Birat, Auteur |
| Année de publication : |
2020 |
| Article en page(s) : |
26 p. |
| Note générale : |
Glossaire - Bibliogr. |
| Langues : |
Anglais (eng) |
| Catégories : |
Développement durable
Transition écologique
Transition énergétique
|
| Index. décimale : |
304.2 Ecologie humaine : les activités sociales humaines et l'environnement. Pollution |
| Résumé : |
After overusing the expression Sustainable Development, some action plan was needed to switch from rhetorical to transformational change. One of the answers was to propose the word Transition as a roadmap leading to the necessary level of change. A Transition is a passage from one stable regime to another, with a step that is neither instantaneous nor dangerous, like a Revolution, but is fast enough, anyway. The first Transition in the 2010s was the Energy Transition, i.e. a move towards less fossil fuels and more renewables. It started everywhere more or less at the same time, but Germany and its Energiewende was among the first contenders. The implicit objective was as much to control excessive anthropogenic GHG emissions as it was to possibly start a new period of growth based on green technologies. Very soon, however, the Fukushima disaster convinced Mrs. Merkel to change tack and veer towards “zero nuclear power”, thus aligning with the program of the Green movements. At that point, the Energiewende had become a complex, multi-objectives program for change, not a simple Transition as described at the onset of the paper. The rest of the world turned to Globish and spoke of the Energy Transition (EnT). Each country added a layer of complexity to its own version of the EnT and told a series of narratives, quite different from each other. This is analyzed in the present article on the basis of the documents prepared by the “energy-community”, which assembles hard scientists and economists, a group that the soft scientists of SSH call STEM. EnT, in its most recent and mature version, hardly speaks of energy any more but of GHG emissions. Therefore, EnT drifted towards the expression Ecological Transition (EcT). Both expressions are almost synonymous today. From then on, myriads similar expressions sprang up: Environmental Transition, Demographic, Epidemiological and Environmental Risk Transition, Societal Transitions, Global Transitions, Economic Transition, Sustainability Transition, Socio-Ecological Transitions, Technology Transitions, Nutrition Transition, Agro-Ecological Transition, Digital Transition, Sanitary Transition as well as various practices like Energy Democracy or Theory of Transition. Focusing only on EnT and EcT, a first step consists in comparing energy technologies from the standpoint of their impact on public health: thus, coal is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude worse than renewable energy, not to speak of nuclear. A second step looks at the materials requirement of Renewables, what has been called the materials paradox. They are more materials-intensive and also call on much larger TMRs (Total Materials Requirement). On the other hand, the matter of critical materials has been blown out of proportion and is probably less out of control than initially depicted. A third step is accomplished by Historians, who show that History is full of energy transitions, which did not always go in one direction and did not always match the storytelling of progress that the present EnT is heavily relying on. Moreover, they flatly reject the long-term storytelling of History depicted as a continuous string of energy transitions, from biomass, to coal, oil, gas, nuclear and nowadays renewables. Just as interesting is the opinion of the Energy-SSH community. They complain that the organizations that control research funds and decision makers listen mainly to the STEM-energy community rather than to them. And they go on to explain, sometimes demonstrate, that this restricts the perspective, over-focuses on certain technologies and confines SSH to an ancillary role in support of projects, the strategy of which is decided without their input: the keyword is asymmetry of information, which therefore leads to distortion of decision-making. They also stress the need for a plurality of views and interpretations, a possible solution to the societal deadlocks often encountered in Europe. As important and strategic as energy issues are in our present world, the hubris of both STEM and SSH communities may be excessive. Some level of success in making them work together may be a way to resolve this situation ! |
| Note de contenu : |
- Transition et transitions
- The energy transition, German style (die energiewende)
- The energy transition, elsewhere in the world : The case in France - The rest of the world - Subcategories in the energy transition
- The ecological transition
- Other transitions
- Other disciplinary prisms through which to explore transitions : Transitions and public health - Transitions and materials need - Energy transitions in history - SSH approaches to energy transitions
- Fig. 1 : Revolution vs. transition, from the standpoint of history and mathematics
- Fig. 2 : The concept of the demographic transition
- Fig. 3 : Energy transition plan in Germany in 2012
- Fig. 4 : Share of renewable energy in the electrical grid (Germany)
- Fig. 5 : ADEME's projections for the French energy system, until 2050
- Fig. 6 : ADME's projections of energy consumption in the industrial and construction sectors (France)
- Fig. 7 : Final energy consumption in 2010, 2035 and 2050 by type of energy (France)
- Fig. 8 : TCEP, trnasition indicators and energy CO2 emissions : the IEA structure of energy transition indicators
- Fig. 9 : Total primary energy supply (TPES), world, according to the IRENA BAU and Remap scenarios
- Fig. 10 : Cumulative energy-related carbon emissions
- Fig. 11 : Total primary energy supply (TPES) by source Japan (1990-2018)
- Fig. 12 : Lessons from the energy transition in Europe
- Fig. 13 : Sustainability transitions
- Fig. 14 : Theory of transitions according to geel
- Fig. 15 : Number of deaths (occupational and air pollution) due to the production of 1TWh relative to various electricity generation technologies
- Fig. 16 : Intensity of steel use in a power plant
- Fig. 17 : ECE including Rare Earths, Platinum Group, photovoltaic elements and other elements (2010)
- Fig. 18 : TMR in 2015 of mineral elements involved in the energy transition
- Fig. 19 : The grid mix in France on 30 March 2020: 19% of the power was exported
- Fig. 20 : The grid mix in Norway : domestic generation right and consumption left (2017)
- Fig. 21 : Transitions: how long do they take? How monotonous are they ?
- Table 1 : Taxonomy
- Appendix A : Objectives of the French ecological transition policy of 2015
- Appendix B : Death rates related to energy production technologies |
| Référence de l'article : |
502 |
| DOI : |
https://doi.org/10.1051/mattech/2021005 |
| En ligne : |
https://www.mattech-journal.org/articles/mattech/pdf/2020/05/mt200061.pdf |
| Format de la ressource électronique : |
Pdf |
| Permalink : |
https://e-campus.itech.fr/pmb/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=35975 |
in MATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES > Vol. 108, N° 5-6 (2020) . - 26 p.
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How to tell the story of change and transition of the energy, ecological and societal systems in MATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES, Vol. 108, N° 5-6 (2020)
