A French energy expert has claimed that Europe's increasing production of renewable energy is "necessary, but not sufficient" for the continent to avert catastrophic climate change, and suggested that an overall reduction in energy consumption is also vital.
"We must look everywhere where we can produce low-carbon electricity," Matthieu Auzanneau, Director of French environmental NGO The Shift Project, said in an interview with RTBF on Tuesday morning.
Auzanneau welcomed Western European countries' decision at the North Sea Summit in Ostend on Monday to multiply wind energy production by a factor of ten by 2050. However, he warned that expanding wind power production alone represents at best an inadequate response to the climate crisis.
"Even if we succeeded in covering the North Sea with offshore wind, while respecting the environment and other activities, especially fishermen, we would not be able to produce as much energy with wind as with oil," Auzanneau said. "The development of these low-carbon production capacities is necessary but not sufficient by itself."
'Sobriety is inexorable'
Auzanneau stated that reducing overall energy consumption is ultimately at the "heart of the matter" and stressed the acute need for energy sobriety. Most crucially, this applies to the consumption of fossil fuels.
"The European Union has an essential challenge to massively reduce its consumption of fossil fuels. The longer we delay this deadline, the more we will find ourselves just as or even more dependent on gas, cheap and abundant, which we import from the Putin regime."
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Auzanneau was extremely critical of the EU's decision to replace Russian pipeline gas with American and Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
"We're undressing Pierre to dress Paul, it's always imported hydrocarbons," he said. "LNG is more expensive and it does not make us get out of dependence on fossil fuels at all".
He added: "Global needs are bound to grow and production is not eternal. Either we will remain massively dependent on fossil fuels, imported if necessary, or we will have to live in a very different way because we will not have enough juice in the cables. Sobriety is inexorable."
