L R AS Published on Monday 21 January 2019 - n° 260 - Categories:forecasts;
Reaching 100% renewable energy by 2050 according to Sia Partners
How can 100% renewable energy be achieved by 2050? Sia Partners is trying to answer this question
For this to happen, France will have to considerably increase its production and therefore multiply its installations by four. Currently, 63% of
101 TWh of renewable electricity produced in France comes from hydropower. Each year France installs 1 GW of wind power and 0.9 GW of solar power.
The nuclear park should also be renewed, hence the table below, which compares the two.
(Editor's note: The life span of a panel is now 25 years on average. Increasingly, they are lasting 30 years, which may change the conclusions in the table. We cannot comment on the other figures).
Only wind power plants are not well accepted by the population: it takes twice as long as in Germany to build a power plant (7 to 9 years).
The most difficult thing remains, managing intermittency. Storage and especially inter-season storage should be developed. The transformation of energy into gas (powertogas) transforms energy into gas stored for the winter. For the moment, there are only about twenty projects in Europe and only 1.4 MW installed in France, whereas 20 GW would be needed.
Another possibility is to reduce peak consumption. This could be done with electric heating, which could have 14 GW that could be erased, but then half of the dwellings would have to be equipped with a heat pump. Half a million dwellings would have to be fitted with heat pumps per year in order to have half of the housing stock equipped by 2050.
Another possibility is to act on the level of consumption in residential housing. It would be necessary to renovate 0.5 million per year until 2030, then 0.75 million per year beyond that. To do this, it would be necessary to reduce the cost of renovation, which costs about 25,000 € on average for an efficient renovation, and to have the technical information. Above all, the French are reticent about a rise in the unit cost of electricity. 10% would accept an increase of 5% or more in their bill in order to have electricity from renewable sources. 64% of French people refuse any increase.
Sia Partners of 16 January
