France Resists Deindustrialization

Today the French government published its defense in the court case brought by several environmental groups claiming that the French government is not keeping its commitments to the 2015 Paris agreement.

Many thanks to JM for translating this article from the French news site Contrepoints:

It’s official: the Minister for the Ecological and Solidarity Transition declared (according to the Paris Administrative Court on February 3, 2021) that renewable energies do not contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases, in a “defense” recorded on June 23, 2020… and that the State has not made public.

The French therefore have official confirmation that the transition from nuclear to intermittent electric energies (wind power, photovoltaic) has no impact on the reduction of CO2 emissions and therefore does not make it possible to fight against global warming, and even less to achieve the objectives defined by the Paris climate agreements in 2015.

Wind turbines are even likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions in France!

For 15 years there have been many ministers for the energy transition (Corinne Lepage, Dominique Voynet, Yves Cochet, Delphine Bato, Nicolas Hulot, François de Rugy, Barbara Pompili), from political ecology. They are responsible for this dismal result and for appointing the still-active architects of this fiasco to key positions.

Rather than suing the French state, the Hulot Foundation should ask for the sanctioning of the promoters of the inefficient energy model based on wind and sun, in particular Mr. Hulot, Minister of the Environment for the period 2017-2018.

Because the real scandal of the Affair of the Century is to deindustrialize France in favor of countries increasing their consumption of coal (China) or gas (Germany), and to destroy the nuclear industry (Fessenheim) to replace it with recoverable energy and intermittent renewables from wind and sun emitting more carbon. All of this for the benefit of mostly foreign investors and at the expense of taxpayers. [emphasis added]

2 thoughts on “France Resists Deindustrialization

  1. Quite frankly, I don’t see where windmills will increase carbon in the air. It may stem from the claim that windmills require more fossil energy to construct than they return in energy production.

    I just finished debating this issue on twitter, and I was forced into doing some research.

    The two myths that are not true is that windmills never return the energy investment required to build them. The second myth is that Texas electricity went down mainly because it invested in windmill energy production. Addressing the second myth, even though the cold weather disabled over 50% of the Texas windmills, the technology for weatherproof windmills is on the shelf and is used in harsh northern climates like Norway. In other words, the Texas energy grid was simply poorly run and mismanaged from the start.

    Having said that, I do not favor replacing fossil fuels with windmills or solar panels, unless individuals or private companies find it profitable in the absence of subsidies or government requirements such as the Paris Climate Ripoff. Windmills like solar panels are becoming a fairly mature technology, and will fill specialized niches.

    I don’t care if there is a certain amount of carbon emitted into the air. Carbon increase is not linked to any climate change; the models which claim it does do not constitute proof or even evidence. There’s a lot of evidence that carbon in the air is beneficial and makes plants grow lusher and faster. The fact that they’re talking about the threat of climate change rather than climate warming, in the face of the coldest, longest, snowiest winter in decades in Texas, proves they are looking for anything to justify more government involvement and more tax revenues to grift from.

    By the way, talking about pollution, windmills have a lifetime of 5 to 20 years depending on who’s doing the estimation. In any case, what to do with all the scrap from thousands of windmills once they end their useful lives? Similarly, what to do with tens of thousands of solar panels built with poisonous rare earths?

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