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Writer's picturemariealixdalle

"Teaching the Energy Transition"

Contribution to «Luxembourg Recovery: 50 idées pour reconstruire»

The pitch: The current situation is a glimpse of what future climate crises have in store for us. In view of the challenges that await us, educating as many people as possible about energy/climate issues and the ecological transition seems essential, starting with our students in all fields.

The idea: Several planetary limits have already been exceeded, foreshadowing future crises, of which the one we are currently experiencing is only a foretaste. Economic, sanitary, ecological, migratory, food crises... All of them have one thing in common: their dependence on energy, planetary resources and the laws of physics, which our economic models do not take into account (the real elasticity of the GDP with respect to primary energy is ~0.6, contrasting with the value of 0.08 of current macroeconomic models).


Energy is everywhere, in each of our actions (health, travel, clothing, profession, object...), and is more and more prevalent with the advent of digital technology. Here are a few orders of magnitude to give an idea of the urgent need to educate the population on this subject:

- Energy drives the economy, with GDP closely linked to energy consumption: a 1% increase in GDP per year corresponds to an increase in global energy consumption of ~1.5PWh per year, requiring the construction of the capacity of one new nuclear power plant every four days. Updating the energy dependency of our economic models may seem like a good idea.

- Thanks to the machines integrated in our daily lives, we all benefit from an equivalent of 200 "energy slaves" per person. If we had to do with our muscles (0.5kWh/d) the work provided by one liter of oil (10kWh), we would have to work for 20 days. The cost of energy does not reflect its utility.

- 80% of the world's energy consumption is based on fossil resources, whose combustion contributes to climate change, and whose reserves will soon be depleted, notably because of the fall in the ERR/EROI (for one barrel of oil spent, we recovered 100 barrels 70 years ago, as opposed to 10 today, despite technological progress). Only 20% of the energy consumed worldwide is in the form of electricity, of which 2% comes from renewable energy. This gives an idea of how far we have to go to replace this fossil fuel energy, in terms of infrastructure and resource consumption (renewable energies require 10-15 times more raw materials than fossil fuels to produce the same amount of energy).

- 15% of the world's energy consumption is used to drive our individual cars, 4% to fly airplanes for private use (which only a small fraction of humanity has access to), 10% to heat our homes, 7% to heat the water in our homes, 14% to transport our food and consumer goods (of which 5% is by ship), 12% to mine raw materials to build new goods. We, as citizens, can influence nearly 60% of energy consumption, just by changing our habits: using public transportation, eating and consuming locally, repairing our goods, heating our homes a little less...

I hope that these few figures have helped you understand the importance and the omnipresence of energy at all levels, and the power of each of us on our daily consumption.

Our students will build our future. It is becoming urgent to give them the keys to these issues governed by the laws of physics, which intervene on the political and economic levels, as well as in all human activities (even a teacher using chalk needs his students to travel to attend his class!).

The author: Marie-Alix Dalle

Sources: Johan Rockström et al., «A safe operating space for humanity», Nature,‎ 23 septembre 2009 Gaël Giraud, Zeynep Kahraman, How Dependent is Growth from Primary Energy? Output Energy Elasticity in 50 Countries (1970-2011)∗TSP‡ April 10, 2014 V. John R. McNeill : Something New Under the Sun - An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: Norton, 2000). Trad. fr. Du nouveau sous le soleil: Une histoire de l’environnement mondial au XXe siècle (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2010) https://jancovici.com/transition-energetique/petrole/a-quand-le-pic-de-production-mondial-pour-le-petrole/ Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, «Energy and Economic Myths», Southern Economic Journal, 1975, 41, p. 347-381; trad. fr.: «L’énergie et les mythes économiques», in Georgescu-Roegen, La Décroissance, 1979, p. 37-104; 1995, p. 73-148; 2006, p. 85-166. Thévard 2012, l’Europe face au pic pétrolier jancovici.com/transition-energetique/l-energie-et-nous/combien-suis-je-un-esclavagiste/ https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/transport-uses-25-percent-of-world-energy https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265388523_Heating_and_cooling_energy_trends_and_drivers_in_buildings https://www.iea.org/sankey/#?c=World&s=Balance Quadrennial Technology review, Concepts in Integrated Analysis, September 2015




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