Humanity faces a major challenge: climate change. In 2015, the Paris Agreement saw 195 countries openly commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep global warming below 2°C. This is a colossal challenge. We will, at best, reach this limit and, at worst, exceed it within the next thirty years, an extremely short length of time. Given that the energy sector accounts for two thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, mitigating climate change for the most part involves a radical overhaul of energy production processes and energy consumption. The task of preventing global warming from exceeding 2°C is indeed a considerable one, since the amount of low-carbon technologies used in electricity production must reach almost 90%. This course aims at providing basic understanding of climate physics, which, in turn, entails climate change mitigation. The objective of the course is to gain perspective on the role of renewable energy sources in energy transition, but also to look at obstacles in terms of intermittence, predictability and integration into the network. Lastly, the course examines the development and implementation of territorial climate plans for energy transition.
Syllabus
Climate change and energy transition: Potential, acceptability and viability
Units 1 and 2: Climate physics
- Climate variability: physical processes (including Earth’s energy budget) and past evolutions
- Climate modeling
- Climate scenarios: development methods, climate change projections
- the IPCC and its reports
Units 3 and 4: Climate change mitigation
- 2°C limit (COP15): Issues and scenarios
- Past emissions: physical principles and simple economics, inventory, peak oil (and other resources)
- National contributions (INDCs) (COP21): Transparent bottom-up project, Paris Agreement, delay effect
- How to achieve the goal: Kaya identity, renewable energy challenges
Unit 5: Climate change and renewable energy sources
- Energy demand
- Fossil fuels and renewable energy
- Renewable energy potential
- Renewable energy deployment scenarios
- Viability of renewable energy and integration
Units 6, 7 and 8: Renewable Energies (RE) barriers
- Variability and intermittence
- Hydroelectricity, a stockable RE source: rainfall variability and accumulation
- Wind and solar: spatial and temporal variability of wind and solar radiation (aerosols, clouds)
- Other resources (marine energy, bioenergy): advancement, availability, exploitability
- RE forecasting and integration
- Nowcasting
- Digital forecast
- Seasonal forecast
- Energy payback of energy used for RE sources
Unit 9: Renewable Energy socioeconomics: National climate change adaptation plan, territorial climate-energy plans
- Teaching coordinator: Drobinski Philippe
- Teaching coordinator: Tantet Alexis