Jean-Marc Jancovici
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2020–2024
2:32:29 · 1.1M views · Jul 30, 2019
Part 1 of Jean-Marc Jancovici's 2019 course at Ecole des Mines de Paris, on energy and its central role in the economy and climate. It is in French with English subtitles available and runs about two and a half hours.
Cited as a source lecture series behind arguments on energy, EROEI, nuclear power and climate.
3 comments from Hacker News
> this specific argument I was supporting with sources none of thoses sources is contradictory of what i explained on the history of our shortages. > Why did you chose hydro? because you talk about mix, today its fr secondary electricity production, and hydro plants are older than fr nuclear plants/projects. >That is half of what EPR needs to invest to keep your ageing fleet from falling apart... i'm not sure of what your talking about again, that's probably half or even less of what we must invest to keep our ageing (not EPR) nuclear fleet yes, which provide 75% of our production, in other words: 8% production for 50billions imported external products + exploitation cost on 20years vs 75% for 50billions local supply one shot to add 20 years to the current fleet, the choice is easy technicaly speaking (not politicaly). our ageing fleet is not linked to EPR at all which may be considered as a prototype for an eventual next fleet, we will see, and as already explained, the cost of our first EPR is not the cost of an EPR in a future fleet. side note: most of our ageing fleet have been build in only 10 years after 20 years of research and "prototypes". > you just accepted to ignore all the costs generations will have to come up with just to cover nuclear waste we started a project in 2000 for longterm deep storage which will provide waste stockage for more than 100years of our current dangerous waste production ( [LINK] ), for less dangerous product we are already treating not on
The current trajectory of temperature increase is at least 4~5°C (rather optimistic) in 2100, which would mean that a pretty wide area surrounding the equator will, year-round or for significant parts of the year, have a wet-bulb temperature at or above 35°C. It is the limit at which human life (and mammal life in general) is entirely impossible, due to over-heating. That unlivable area will include most of India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, etc. Hong-Kong and Taiwan, whether you consider them as part of China or not, will anyway not be livable anymore by then. What do you think will happen when India, a country of 1.3B armed with nuclear weapons, realize it literally has to move somewhere else for survival? Do you think all these people will agree to die in silence, peacefully so as to not inconvenience you? On top of that grim outlook, agriculture has only been possible relatively recently in human history. Until about 10,000 years ago the climate was not stable enough to reliably grow crops, year after year. That stability is probably already gone. Note that the issue for agriculture (and forests, etc.) is less the actual temperature and more the rain/weather patterns (and evaporation, that links back to temperature). There is absolutely no guarantee that we will be able to adapt our crops fast enough for agriculture to keep up, especially if there is too much instability around the globe. Without stable crops the number of people that can survive on Earth is not very larg
Slides of the 20 hours lectures at Ecoles des Mines Paris [LINK] The lectures: this video The (already provided in a previous comment) EROEI study: [LINK] The one specific slide about the low EROEI of solar panel is in: [LINK] The 2.7 value is from 2019, as calculated for Spain, this one slide is in english. Panels have not made a x10 EROEI explosion in the past 5 years, a lot of the energy costs in that calculation are independent of panel technology improvements.