Serious about Energy Efficiency, part one.

France is an ecologically imperfect society. One writer called it “the light green society.” But at least it is trying to decarbonize its energy production and use energy more efficiently than the United States. I described this in a previous essay, and provide a little more detail here.

France relies heavily on nuclear power. Many ecologically-oriented citizens dislike this. But it does mean that France imports less natural gas from Russia. The existing nuclear plants seem to be operating safely, although France has not yet fully thought through a plan for eventually dismantling them when they are old. But at least France has no plans to build new nuclear facilities. Instead, France wants to rely more on sustainable energy, an important component of which is solar energy. Here in Strasbourg, we have solar panels all over the place, especially the roofs of parking structures—at least, those parking structures that do not have gardens on the roof.

Alsace, in eastern France, has a lot of hydropower electricity. Much of this comes from water that flows from the Vosges Mountains down the Ill, Aar, Muhlwasser, and other rivers, and the canals, such as the Marne-Rhine canal very near where I live. As it flows downhill, the water runs electrical turbines. There are no major dams, just small barriers. Also, electricity is used to pump water to higher levels, and the water generates electricity as it descends back to the canal or river.

In France, each electrical consumer can log into a website. In the middle of the day, 65 percent of the electricity came from nuclear power, and 25 percent from solar power. Four percent of the electricity was from hydropower, and three percent from wind. When the sun set, of course, solar electricity went to zero percent. The most expensive part of solar electricity is storing the energy, something in which France has not invested. At sunset on October 2, nuclear power provided 75 percent of the electricity and hydropower provided 14 percent.

Coal, at least here in Alsace, comes in consistently at zero percent.

A quick comparison to America is irresistible. Is there ever a time, anywhere in America, where solar energy provides 25 percent of the electricity, or coal provides zero percent? And yet President Trump wants to make America more dependent on fossil fuels and to discourage the development of wind and solar energy. He is leading America boldly back into the twentieth century, a century of war and waste, while France is moving meekly into the twenty-first.

The news outlets that reported Trump’s $8 billion in sustainable energy cuts made it sound like Trump was taking revenge on the blue states (according to one source) or the states that Harris won (according to another). While I believe Trump was, in fact, intending retribution (he has an ego that is almost unparalleled in recent history), the facts do not prove it. This may be what we could call a false correlation. Of course most of the sustainable energy projects are in blue states; those are the only states that want sustainable energy. Maybe Trump just hates energy production that is not based on coal and oil, and this explains the pattern, rather than antipathy towards Democrats or Harris.

The energy system in Alsace is so efficient that it generates a surplus of electricity, which is sold primarily to nearby Germany. There is a surplus despite the electricity used to pump the water.

There are a number of advantages to this system.

• First, there are few electrical interruptions—none in the nearly two years I have lived here—because nuclear energy is absolutely constant and predictable.
• Second, there are few interruptions because the electrical cables are all underground, except for the ones that provide voltage to the electric trams. There are no tornadoes to knock down power lines or twist them up in tree branches. France does have a few major storms, but is less vulnerable to them.
• Third, the various sources will share their electricity with one another. This does not happen as much in America, especially in Texas, where the power grid is mostly independent of the rest of the country. 

Back in America, our family was very unusual. We used less electricity than not only the average household, but even the average energy-conserving household, according to information provided on our monthly bills. But here in France, our energy use is about average.

An energy-efficient economy, even if imperfect, is attainable. France is doing it. According to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, France is the most energy-efficient country in the world. America comes in at tenth, which is not bad, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

France: The Light Green Society

It is easy, now that I live in France, to feel proud that I am part of a society that has less of a destructive impact on the Earth than I did when I lived in America. For example, in America, by my actual count in Oklahoma, about one-third of the vehicles on the road were pickup trucks, most of them with empty truck beds and not used for work. In contrast, in France, almost nobody drives big pickup trucks around. Instead, they drive small cars. Pickup trucks could simply not fit on most of the roads in cities, though trucks still transport merchandise on highways between cities. In addition, the French have a lot fewer cars. The country that leads the world in car ownership per capita is San Marino, with 1,606 vehicles per 1,000 population. In France, there are only 671 cars per 1,000 people, compared to America’s average of 850.

France has recently moved away from fossil fuels, especially since Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine (which exports much fossil fuel to Europe), but not very far.

In France, fracking for natural gas is illegal. In America, in contrast, fracking is celebrated even by environmental organizations because natural gas is less carbon-intense than coal or oil. But fracking unintentionally (one could say uncontrollably) produces gas leaks, and methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. At least as important a reason is that fracking can destabilize dormant faults and produce earthquakes. For a while around 2013, Oklahoma was the most earthquake-prone part of the United States, surpassing even California, a fact noted by numerous scientific articles. When I was growing up in Cushing, Oklahoma, we worried about earthquakes in California, to which we were moving, not imagining that Cushing would be an earthquake epicenter a half century later. By the time I left Oklahoma, when I drove between Durant and Tulsa on rural highways, I saw dozens of new fracking facilities.

But France is not as good as it looks, though much greener than America. And although in France there are more small cars (and fuel-efficient work vans) and fewer trucks than in America, a lot of these small cars smell strongly of fumes.

France gets 64.8 percent of its power from nuclear energy, and is building new nuclear plants. France leads the world in the percentage of nuclear power. The principal reason for this is energy security. France considered decommissioning many of its nuclear plants, but when Russia invaded Ukraine, threatening fossil fuel supplies, France decided to keep its nuclear plants open. It uses more nuclear energy per capita than America (18.6 percent). In this way also, France does not appear to be as green as one might think. France gets more of its energy from hydropower (10.4 percent) than America (5.5 percent), but not a lot. In America, though not as much as in China, much of the hydropower comes from big dam projects. In France, a lot of the electricity comes from small-scale projects, such as the Fessenheim facility on the Rhine River, which has not require the construction of a huge dam or expensive maintenance. I have even seen tiny micro-power stations along creeks in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace in France, from which just a single cable conveyed electricity.

Is France doing enough to be environmentally responsible? Is it a light-green society, as Michael Bess referred to it in his 2003 book? But that’s better than being, like America and China, superstars of environmental degradation. When I go walking in France, I can breathe a little easier than I could in America, knowing that I am in a society that is preparing seriously, if imperfectly, for a future of environmental constraints.