16 November 2023

16:45 – 17:30

Amphithéâtre Painlevé

Gilles Lepesant

Gilles Lepesant is a geographer, Director of Research at the CNRS (Géographie-Cités, Paris) and associate researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin) and the Asian Energy Studies Centre (Hong Kong Baptist University). His work focuses on the territorial challenges of energy transition in the European Union. He is the author of Géographies des énergies, l’Europe dans le nouvel équilibre mondial, éditions Hermann, Paris (2022).

Conference: What European policy for a successful energy transition?

The spatial distribution of coal mines has partly shaped Europe’s industrial landscape. With the aim of achieving climate neutrality by 2050, the European Union intends to rely mainly on decarbonized energy sources. Tensions with China and Russia have also fuelled the ambition to have a large proportion of the technologies and resources (metals in particular) needed for the transition available on European soil. Some European territories are already taking advantage of this process. Details of this process are all the more justified given that the poles of production of low-carbon energies are likely to attract other industrial investments and thus reshape the economic geography inherited from the Industrial Revolution.