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Choosing your energy sources, choosing your future

Bertrand Barré
AREVA

What do you see as the primary energy issue of the next few decades?

Roughly speaking, we will have to double world energy production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, keeping in mind that 80% of our energy is currently supplied by oil, coal and natural gas combustion, the primary source of greenhouse gases! The challenge is a daunting one. But without increased production, the Third World will be deprived of the economic development to which it is entitled, and without reduced emissions, we may irreversibly alter the earth's climate and our entire environment. We must also prepare to see oil production peak in a few decades. Every year we consume a quantity of oil that it took the earth a million years to produce. Yet oil is currently the world's, and even France's, top energy source, despite the geopolitical ups and downs that dog it.

What do you see as the primary energy issue of the next few decades?