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Patrice Cahart: "The development of wind power harms the climate"

2021-07-16T14:43:55.472Z


FIGAROVOX / GRAND ENTRETIEN - In his new book La Peste Aeolienne, Patrice Cahart warns of the spread of these “tall carcasses”. Wind turbines thrive thanks to the public's continued ignorance and dogmatic support from decision-makers, he argues.


Patrice Cahart is Inspector General of Finance, former adviser to the Court of Cassation and author of the book

La Peste Aolienne

(Hugo Doc, 2021).

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FIGAROVOX.

- The title of your work is

La Peste Aolienne

.

Why are you using a sickly metaphor?

PATRICE CAHART. -

Wind power has this in common with the plague that it spreads despite warnings, and that it kills. In this case, the victims are the French landscapes. I have been studying this disease for about ten years. My articles and lectures have had little effect on policy makers. The time has therefore come to raise the tone.

Polluting, wind power is first of all by its forced marriage with gas. An onshore wind turbine in our country only operates at 25% of its capacity on average. Most often, it is stationary or idling. However, consumers need a regular diet. To ensure the complement, we must therefore turn to gas, which has three serious drawbacks: its combustion releases carbon dioxide, it is not renewable, it puts us in dependence on Russia. I would add that, recently, its price has experienced a strong rise on the world markets. In short, wind power and gas form an infernal couple.

Polluting, wind power is polluting a second time, by diverting to its use enormous sums which would be much more useful elsewhere. I calculated that to replace by 2035, as the official program would like, twelve reactors with renewables (two thirds of wind power and one third of photovoltaic), it would be necessary to invest 145 billion, including the development of a very branched network and the constitution of a gas back-up force. In contrast, the maintenance of the twelve reactors by so-called large refit work would cost only 13 billion. The difference between the two figures, namely 132 billion, corresponds to what would be wasted by wind power instead of going to really useful causes (building insulation, electric heating, promotion of electric vehicles).

The more we develop wind power, the more we will harm the climate.

Nuclear power is only half of our potential.

If it nevertheless provides 70% of our current, it is mainly due to the intermittence of wind and photovoltaic power.

Patrice Cahart

Another argument is that of the need for diversification of energy sources, as in Germany where renewable energies already provide 25% of total electricity production.

Can we consider that France has already operated this diversity?

Indeed, our electricity production is already sufficiently diverse.

Nuclear power is only half of our potential.

If it nevertheless provides 70% of our current, it is mainly due to the intermittence of wind and photovoltaic power.

Moreover, within the nuclear sector, we can observe a geographical and technical diversity.

It should increase with the entry into the scene of fast neutrons, advocated by the Academy of Sciences last June, and that, later, of nuclear fusion, the possibilities of which are immense.

You seem to defend nuclear power.

For what reasons ?

I recommend keeping nuclear in place as long as possible, instead of replacing it with wind and photovoltaic combined with gas. In the United States, where the reactors are similar, two of them, near Miami, have been allowed to operate until their eightieth birthday, and more may follow. In France, we want to ignore this example. But if we take it, our current nuclear fleet still has forty years ahead of it.

The marginal cost of the nuclear power that comes from it, that is to say the amount that must be spent, including the large fairing, to maintain production, is only 33 € per megawatt-hour or MWh ( one MWh worth one thousand kwh). In comparison, the cost resulting from the best tenders for onshore wind power is around € 55 per MWh. But onshore wind projects of less than seven machines are, for mysterious reasons, exempt from calls for tenders; they then benefit from a guaranteed income of an average of € 91 per MWh, at the taxpayer's expense. We must also add to these last two figures the cost of setting up a branched network and a gas back-up force, which has almost the effect of doubling them. Theonshore wind power is therefore very far from being competitive with nuclear power.

As for the wind fixed at sea, it is a financial horror, which reaches its peak in the bay of Saint-Brieuc, with a guaranteed income of 155 € per MWh - to which are added, here again, the two supplements defined more high.

To try to make people forget this disaster, an appeal was launched near Dunkirk.

According to the gossips, EDF has come under heavy pressure.

Its moderate offer was retained - only € 44 per MWh, not counting the two supplements.

This apparent success has sparked rave reviews that wind power is now “mature” and cheap.

But the shallow North Sea is in no way representative of our other seas.

In the English Channel, in the Atlantic, you have to go down to thirty meters and tackle hard rocks.

Every other day, the swell prevents maintenance.

In addition, the Dunkirk sector is characterized by intense maritime and air navigation, hardly compatible with wind turbines.

Our Belgian friends had not even been consulted!

Incredible negligence, or a policy of fait accompli.

They are suing.

The Dunkirk miracle turns into a fiasco.

Integration is impossible.

Our civilization must face a new barbarism.

Patrice Cahart

The debate has shifted to the waste side. This is the argument brandished by good apostles in Brussels, to force France to abandon one of the few assets that remain to it - nuclear power. The answer is the Cigéo project in Bure (Meuse): hazardous waste would be buried five hundred meters deep, under a layer of clay 130 meters thick. As the region is not seismic, this layer has not moved for 160 million years. It is difficult to see why, suddenly, this would change. The project therefore seems reasonable to me. In Finland and Sweden, similar projects are moving forward without anyone protesting. Let us hope that our government will have the courage to carry out Cigéo to success despite the orchestrated opposition.

The aesthetic question crystallizes many issues.

Couldn't wind turbines fit into French landscapes?

Our landscapes have been shaped by the centuries.

The milestones are bell towers which rarely exceed twenty meters.

But we are now in France, facing wind projects two hundred and forty meters high.

Integration is impossible.

Our civilization must face a new barbarism.

No doubt I will be objected to the Eiffel Tower.

If we love her, it's because she is unique.

The day we see dozens and hundreds of them, they will be hated.

But it will be too late.

From now on, we have dared to install twenty-two wind turbines on the Sainte-Victoire chain - opposite the Gothic basilica of Saint-Maximin and the Sainte-Baume massif, a two-thousand-year-old pilgrimage site. The Marseille administrative court of appeal found that these intruders had been installed by means of obsolete building permits. Will we succeed in uprooting them?

In addition to the question of landscapes, there is that of the winged fauna.

Throughout Western Europe, birds and bats, all species combined, are experiencing a dramatic drop in their numbers, due to pesticides.

This is no reason to add more with wind power.

Eager to ward off this criticism, the profession exhibits ridiculously low mortality statistics.

She forgets to say that foxes, badgers, raptors remove most of the small corpses before the passage of the investigators.

The persistent growth of wind power can be explained above all by the ignorance of the public, who are led to believe that this form of energy is useful for the climate.

Patrice Cahart

How do you explain such enthusiasm, both public opinion and political power, for wind turbines?

The persistent growth of wind power can be explained above all by the ignorance of the public, who are led to believe that this form of energy is useful for the climate.

This ignorance is nurtured and exploited by a powerful and wealthy lobby group, largely foreign, which has its entrances into the ministries. Wind power is one of the very few professions where, in France, one can still quickly make a fortune. Why this particularity? Due to the generosity of the State, which grants promoters this incredible favor, a guarantee of income over twenty years. The promoter sells his current on the markets; the State pays him the difference between the price obtained and the guaranteed revenue. In this way, French taxpayers have provided, over the past few years, about half of the turnover of the wind industry (apart from the minority submitted to calls for tenders). Who says better ?

As for most of the political leaders, they are, unfortunately, careful not to try to educate the public.

They prefer to stand in the wind.

Before opposing wind turbines, you specify your interest in the ecological question, implying that for some, an opposition to wind turbines could rhyme with a certain ecological refusal ...

For my part, I am a freelance author, without political allegiance.

Nobody pays me.

I have no other concern than the national interest.

I take climate risk very seriously, but I think wind power, at least in our country, is one of the worst solutions.

By pursuing this chimera, we are depriving ourselves of the actions really necessary, in favor of the insulation of buildings, electric heating and electric vehicles.

Wind power is one of the most serious dangers threatening France.

The Aeolian Plague

, Patrice Cahart, Hugo Doc, coll.

“Alert”, 2021, 156p, € 9.95.

Hugo doc

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-07-16

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