Week 0 – Session 4

Innovation towards a low

carbon future

Jean-Pierre DEFLANDRE

MOOC ENERGY TRANSITION

IFP SCHOOL
MOOC Energy Transition: Program content presentation
This MOOC entitled “Energy transition: Innovation towards a low carbon future” and
the previous one on “Tomorrow’s mobility: Sustainable technologies for the
automotive sector”, illustrate the domains where IFP School is fully involved in the
energy transition.

This new MOOC is a huge educational challenge as it covers a wide spectrum of

topics. Of course, it will neither be exhaustive of all the energy transition aspects nor
the global warming mitigation measures.

The MOOC objectives aim to sensitize students, including future engineers,

economists, geoscientists, on the role they may play in the future, when working in
the different domains we will go through during the MOOC. Thus, contributing to a
more sustainable world. But to do so, we made choices to record only a limited series
of videos and bonus.

We chose to follow the 2°C Sustainable Development Scenario approach, proposed

by the International Energy Agency, in coherence with Paris Agreement, and
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Today, this is not the
most ambitious scenario, but it will be enough difficult to deploy, considering actions
effectively taken by nations.

In practice, we will refer to the Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS), while

making some comparisons with the New Policies Scenario (NPS) that represent a
4.5°C global warming, see Figure 1.

On one hand, with the Sustainable Development Scenario, CO2 emissions reduction
lays on the energy mix evolution, with a significant coal and oil use reduction after
2020. For natural gas, there will be a moderate increase in gas consumption until
having a plateau at horizon 2030. But on the other hand, the New Policies Scenario,
resulting from effective decisions taken by nations today, shows a constant increase
in fossil fuels whatever there are.

To be sustainable and to limit global warming, we have to evolve and innovate on a

series of topics, cutting drastically anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This shall be a
voluntary worldwide attitude. The most important topics deal with energy efficiency
and the development of renewables, representing together 80% of the effort. Then
come, Carbon Capture and Storage, Nuclear, fuel-switching and a few other topics.

In Figure 2, CO2 abatements result from a series of actions and innovation in the
different domains: energy efficiency, development of renewable energies, fuel
switching, nuclear and Carbon Capture and Storage deployment (CCS). From year
to year respective forecasted shares of the different topics can evolve, but mainly
energy efficiency and the development of renewables represent the main sources
of CO2 abatements. CCS is the third option in term of CO2 emissions reduction.

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Figure 1: Fossil-fuel demand in Mtoe versus scenarios (NPS: New Policies Scenario and
SDS: Sustainable Development Scenario) - Source: International Energy Agency,
World Energy Outlook report 2017.

So the challenge is to make moving from the New Policies Scenario to the
Sustainable Development Scenario possible to limit global warming to only 2°C. It
means we have to cut by a factor 2 the amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions at
horizon 2040 (reducing them from 36 Gt of CO2 to 18 Gt).

Figure 2: Global anthropogenic CO2 emissions in Gt versus scenario. The Central

scenario roughly corresponds to the New Policies Scenario and the 2°C scenario to
the Sustainable Development Scenario- source: International Energy Agency, World
Energy Outlook report - Source: International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook
report 2017.

Innovation towards a low carbon future Page 2 on 3

Following the general introduction, done by my colleagues Arash and Sidney we will
enter our specific MOOC program.

Figure 3: MOOC program structure per week.

During Week 1, Arash and Sidney will discuss on the development of renewables
while presenting associated challenges. Their lectures will be completed by a
specific lecture on offshore wind energy done by Philippe, in charge of IFP Energies
nouvelles research & innovation studies in that domain.

During Week 2, we will look at the georesources component of the SDS energy mix.
My colleague Anne will introduce geothermal power, a renewable energy from the
underground, and I will personally continue with the key role of natural gas,
presenting the challenge we have to face to make it sustainable.

As a whole, the first two weeks correspond to the Sustainable Development Scenario
energy mix presentation while the two last weeks are devoted to innovation.

During week 3, I will present what Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is, and my
colleague David (from IFP Energies nouvelles) will go on with energy storage. In
practice, the week 3 program delivers part of the answers of weeks 1 and 2
challenges.

During Week 4, my colleagues, Jean-Luc, Olivier, Denis, Nathalie and Perrine will go
on with energy efficiency, biofuels and bio-sourced chemicals. This will close on
innovative techniques to make the energy transition successful.

Fully hoping you had previously appreciated our MOOC on Tomorrow’s mobility, we
hope now you will enjoy this second IFP school experience.

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