How to tell the story of change and transition of the energy, ecological and societal systems / Jean-Pierre Birat in MATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES, Vol. 108, N° 5-6 (2020)  

[article]  inMATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES > Vol. 108, N° 5-6 (2020) . - 26 p. 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 [article]

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MFA vs. LCA, particularly as environment management methods in industry : an opinion / Jean-Pierre Birat in MATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES, Vol. 108, N° 5-6 (2020)  

[article]  inMATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES > Vol. 108, N° 5-6 (2020) . - 10 p. Titre : MFA vs. LCA, particularly as environment management methods in industry : an opinion Type de document : texte imprimé Auteurs : Jean-Pierre Birat, Auteur Année de publication : 2020 Article en page(s) : 10 p. Note générale : Bibliogr. Langues : Anglais (eng) Catégories : Analyse des flux de matières et d'énergie Durée de vie (Ingénierie) Industrie Matériaux Index. décimale : 304.2 Ecologie humaine : les activités sociales humaines et l'environnement. Pollution Résumé : MFA was born in the 1980s, independently, in various laboratories around the world. On the one hand, Industry was trying then to put numbers on its circular economy practices, while, on the other, Academia endeavored to construct a metaphor of natural ecology (BioGeoChemical Cycles [BGCC]) or of the metabolism of ecosystems to describe the activities of the anthroposphere, especially its material and the energy flows (and stocks). This article briefly reviews the early efforts of Usinor (now ArcelorMittal) in this area, in the framework of a program called “The Cycle of Iron” and points out what it was trying to achieve: basically, analyze and evaluate a true recycling rate (RR) of steel. MFA turned out to be potentially a more powerful tool than ad hoc models of materials circularity too and Industry left the leadership to academic groups to flesh out the new methodology to confront such difficult questions as the evaluation of a RR. Then the article conducts a kind of methodological and epistemological audit of the present status of MFA, positioning it in the wide framework of descriptions of material flows in space and time, and thus picturing it as a competing methodology to LCA. While the former is macro-scale, synchronic, broadly economy-oriented, the latter is micro-scale, diachronic, product and value chain-oriented, while both “report” to different communities, the Industrial Ecology community and the LCA community respectively, and more. Both schools of thoughts have been attending SAM conferences regularly, where they have been reporting their continuous search for new developments and their search for a better sustainability assessment of materials, products, industrial systems and economic activities of all kinds. The various contributions over the first 12 SAM events are analyzed. Finally, MFA and LCA are compared, feature by feature, in terms of the communities they serve and of their strengths and weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, the conclusion is that they are more complementary than competing with each other. Note de contenu : - Introduction - Usinor's attempt at inventing MFA - LCA vs. MFA - Society and materials conferences - MFA and various user communities - Strengths and weakness of MFA - Conclusions Référence de l'article : 503 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1051/mattech/2021004 En ligne : https://www.mattech-journal.org/articles/mattech/pdf/2020/05/mt200060.pdf Format de la ressource électronique : Pdf Permalink : https://e-campus.itech.fr/pmb/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=35976 [article]

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The environment and materials, from the standpoints of ethics, social sciences, law and politics / Jean-Pierre Birat in MATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES, Vol. 107, N° 1 (2019)  

[article]  inMATERIAUX & TECHNIQUES > Vol. 107, N° 1 (2019) . - 20 p. Titre : The environment and materials, from the standpoints of ethics, social sciences, law and politics Type de document : texte imprimé Auteurs : Jean-Pierre Birat, Auteur Année de publication : 2019 Article en page(s) : 20 p. Note générale : Bibliogr. Langues : Anglais (eng) Catégories : Durée de vie (Ingénierie) Ethique de l'environnement Matériaux -- Aspect de l'environnement Politique de l'environnement Pollution Tags : Matériaux  'Production  de  matériaux'  'Utilisation  des  'Matières  premières'  'Economie  circulaire'  'Empreinte  écologique'  'Principe  du  pollueur-payeur'  'Développement  durable'  précaution'  'Hiérarchie  déchets'  'Questions  environnementales'  ACV  AFM  'Ethique  l’environnement'  Anthropocentrisme  Biocentrisme  Ecocentrisme  'Code Index. décimale : 304.2 Ecologie humaine : les activités sociales humaines et l'environnement. Pollution Résumé : Materials are deeply connected with the environment, because they stem from raw materials extracted from the geosphere, rely on large amounts of energy and of water in their production stage, project emissions to air, water and soil when their ores (or minerals) are mined, when they are made in steel mills or cement kilns, including very significant amounts of greenhouse gases. They also contribute to emissions and energy consumption of the artifacts of which they are part, either consumption or investment goods. Their connection with the biosphere raises many issues, in terms of toxicology, ecotoxicology or biodiversity or simply of public health or in the working place. Materials, as an essential part of the anthroposphere, interact deeply with the anthroposphere itself but also with the biosphere, the geosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, thus with nature in a general way through mechanisms which can no longer simply be described at the margin, as resource depletion or as pollution. This raises issues related to the sustainability of materials in human activities, in which they are deeply immersed and entangled. The standard way of dealing with these environmental issues is to invoke sustainability and to explain that all actors are engaged in sustainable development, a morals or an ethics that points in which direction to go: all players in the materials field, industry, institutions and research, claim allegiance to sustainable development. At a more technical level, specific tools like Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are used extensively to measure the interaction of materials with the environment. This, however, is not enough to deal properly with the environmental issues of materials, because these issues are not marginal any longer: the anthroposphere has become so large with respect to the biosphere, the geosphere and the planet in general that environmental risk is now part of modern life, especially in connection with climate change and the loss of biodiversity. To go deeper in analyzing the connection of human activities with nature, it is therefore necessary to reach out to SSH (Social Science and Humanities) disciplines and particularly to environmental ethics. This is a prerequisite for materials scientists (and others) to act decisively in the future in the face of the danger that lies ahead of us. The present paper reviews the advances of environmental ethics, a fairly young discipline born in the 1970s, in as far as it can help all actors on the world anthropospheric theater choose their lines for the future in a more conscious and sophisticated way than simply claiming obedience to sustainability. We will review briefly intellectual forerunners of the discipline like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri David Thoreau, Rachel Carson or Paul Ehrlich. This will help flesh out well-known concepts like the precautionary principle or the “polluter-pays” principle, which are invoked in creating new materials or new processes to keep pollution and health issues under control, as part of the constraints of professional ethics but also of environmental law. It will be necessary to question to whom or to what the key concept of intrinsic value is attached : people, all living organisms or ecosystems, i.e. the environment in general, and thus to define anthropocentrism, biocentrism and ecocentrism. Environmental law and the ethics of sustainable development are still mainly anthropocentric while scientific ecology is more clearly ecocentric. To tackle the challenges of environmental issues as they are posed today and to avoid catastrophes, it might be necessary in the future for all social players and for people of the world of materials to follow the steps of environmental ethics and to move up from anthropocentrism to the broader vision of ecocentrism. Note de contenu : - MORE ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MATERIALS, MATERIALS SCIENTISTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT - POSITIONING MATERIALS AND THE SPHERES OF ECOLOGY IN AN HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE - KEYWORDS : NATURE, ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY - ESSENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONCEPTS : Identification of "environmental issues" : pollution and environmental damage, resources and resource depletion, ecosystems and biodiversity - Construction of the concept of sustainability - Damage to human health and to non-human health - toxicology and ecotoxicology - Environmental polycymaking, law and legislation - DISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO THE ENVIRONMENTS : Natural philosophy and the separation of science from philosophy - National parks and the appeal of wilderness - Critical events and critical writings - Environmental philosophy and philosophy of environment - Environmental ethics : major concepts and schools of thought - More radical approaches : ecofeminism, ecocriticism and social ecology - How do various institutions fare regarding environmental ethics ? - ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS, CODES AND REGULATIONS - MEASURING THE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES OF OBJECTS, TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES Référence de l'article : 102 DOI : 10.1051/mattech/2018067 En ligne : https://www.mattech-journal.org/articles/mattech/pdf/2019/01/mt180036.pdf Format de la ressource électronique : Pdf Permalink : https://e-campus.itech.fr/pmb/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=32682 [article]

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