[en] The energy transition is a decisive issue of the 21. century, particularly in relation to the reduction of the harmful consequences of the climatic changes. However, this transition is subjected to several hazards: economic, geologic, social, environmental and geopolitical ones. In order to evaluate the vulnerability and the conditions of feasibility of the energy transition scenarios it is necessary to be able to evaluate the supply chain of the technologies related to the energy system, in the technological and but also geographical dimensions. The current studies such as the life cycle assessments (LCA) allow to take into account the supply chain in the technological dimension, but these studies do not provide or only few information about the geographical dimension. At the opposite, the Input-Output Analysis (IOA), particularly the multiregional ones (MRIO) provide an information about the regional exchanges by categories of products, but are very aggregated. The nomenclatures of the economic activities and the categories of products taken into account are restricted. The works realized within this thesis aim to exploit the best of each tool, i.e. the technological information from the LCA and the geographical information from the MRIO. A new methodology is proposed to regionalize the LCA inventory with the MRIO data. This methodology allows to use the geographical information of the LCA data when it exists or otherwise use the geographical information from MRIO to estimate it. A particular attention is paid to get a realistic model, i.e. to match the activities and the products with real geographical data. The tools produced in this thesis are the first step to evaluate the energy transition scenarios. Particularly, they allow to realize regionalized LCA inventories to evaluate the needs and impacts of the technologies involved in the energy transition. However, additional works are necessary to take into account the temporal dimension of the energy transition scenarios. The new method needs to manipulate a lot of different data from different sources. In order to manage these data a new collaborative web platform has been set up. It allows to manipulate the data through a web interface as well as uses them in calculation frameworks. In order to facilitate the evolution of the tools and the manipulation of the data, a work about how to structure and manipulate the information was realized. A new semantic architecture - called computer ontology - has been developed to facilitate the management of the knowledges but also the maintenance and the integration of new knowledges. The collaborative framework can fit the specifications for a one person usage or a community. (author)

[en] In-between the limits fixed by the available resources and the physical susceptibility of the geosphere, Physical Sciences have to play a part in building our common future, together with other sciences, as we focused during the first session of the school. During the second session of the school we considered the Sustainable Energy challenge taken up on a world-wide basis, giving rise to very diverse energy scenarios. This third session will start with a focus on the so-called EROI index (Energy Return on (Energy) Invested) of energy systems. Case studies point to the various perimeters that can be considered when calculating the Energy Invested. Besides, societies use a mix of energy sources having different EROIs indices, and the ways these sources contribute to a societal EROI will be addressed. A second part of the session will be devoted to a number of key-factors entering the calculation of EROIs: availability of resources, capacity of energy storage, structure and efficiency of energy grids. As an example, renewable energies have a high potential, but capturing, converting, storing and distributing these energies require important amounts of mineral resources. The associated amount of primary energy needed has to be evaluated. Besides entropy limits, technical, social and economic limits which make our use of scarce metals highly dispersive. These constraints have to be taken into account when designing future energy scenarios. A third part will be concerned with economic modeling incorporating biophysical constraints, such as energy availability and entropy production. Various recent approaches aiming at generating models with an intrinsic dynamics will be discussed. The third edition of this workshop at the Ecole de Physique des Houches aims at exposing and exploring the potential contributions of Physics to the energy challenge. Numerous roads of ongoing research will cross and cross-fertilize in the program, profiting a second objective of the workshop: design the knowledge basis for young physicists and engineers who will implement the energy transition. This vast scientific program cannot and will not be exhausted in a one week seminar. On the contrary, the workshop Energy Scenarios: Which Research in Physics? Is only the third one in an expected longer series. This document brings together the available presentations (slides): 1 - After Paris COP21: The New Climate Policy Momentum (Jean-Pascal van Ypersele); 2 - Challenges for climate science after Paris (Robert Vautard); 3 - The net EROI for solar PV: a case study for Spain (Pedro A. Prieto); 4 - History, applications, numerical values and problems with the calculation of EROI (Energy Return on energy) Investment (Charles A. S. Hall); 5 - Renewable Systems from pre-modern periods: intermittency issues and resources management (Mathieu Arnoux); 6 - Estimations of very long-term time series of fossil fuels global EROI (Victor Court, Florian Fizaine); 7 - Examining The Relation between Quality of Life and Biophysical vs Economic Conditions (Jessica G. Lambert); 8 - Suppose we agree how to calculate EROIs... so/now what? (Carey W. King); 9 - Grid, DG and demand control: operation vs. evolution (N. Hadjsaid); 10 - The use of intermittent sources for electricity production in Germany, Sweden, Europe (F. Wagner); 11 - Energy transmission networks at different scales: Method, results and limits (Johannes Dorfner); 12 - The EROIs of Power Plants - why are they so different? You never find two publications with the same results... (Daniel Weissbach); 13 - Overview of existing and innovative batteries, impact of the storage on the renewable electricity life cycle (Fabien Perdu); 14 - Power to gas to power, Solution or dead lock? (Georges Sapy); 15 - Smart Grids: A high-tech [r]evolution to facilitate the energy transition (Andrei Nekrassov); 16 - Natural Resources in a Monetary Macro-dynamics Work in progress (Gael Giraud); 17 - Hybrid LCA-I/O approach to estimate EROI, Application to wind power (Cyril Francois); 18 - Mineral resources availability and recycling limits: A constraint for ambitious and sustainable energy scenarios (Philippe Bihouix); 19 - Biophysical economics: Essential for the second half of the age of oil (Charles A. S. Hall, Kent Klitgaard); 20 - Transition Engineering Scenarios, What EROI tells us about the future (Susan Krumdieck); 21 - Dynamical Economic model in a finite world (Christophe Goupil, Eric Herbert, Yves D'Angelo, Quentin Couix); 22 - Long-term endogenous economic growth and energy transitions (Victor Court, Pierre-Andre Jouvet, Fredric Lantz); 23 - Growth, productivity and oil history - The Gordon knot (Michel Lepetit); 24 - Taking climate change seriously (Ivar Ekeland); 25 - Dedicating multi-scale approaches to low carbon prospective studies (Nadia Maizi); 26 - EROI and the zero lower bound (Michel Lepetit); 27 - Summing it up: A couple of implications for collective decision (Jean-Marc Jancovici)

[en] Within the past century, the development of energy sources - mainly stock energy ones like coal, oil and natural gas - has followed a rather simple economic path: based on an increasing demand for energy, each source developed steadily, allowing a never-seen-before increase of wealth. In a world without limits, economic models may ignore physical constraints. The challenge of climate change and the possibility of resource exhaustion (both in energy sources and key materials) require economic thinking to take into account the physical world. This has led to the emergence of bio-economics, which was the subject of 2016 session of this series of Les Houches meetings. Then the concept of EROI was placed at the center of the study week. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions down to zero by 2050 will involve abstaining from using a large amount of fossil fuels. By that time, we will have to manage stock and flux energy sources together, to substitute certain energy sources for others, and to modify energy consumption patterns. This calls for a trans-disciplinary effort, widely recommended but rarely attempted. Indeed, most quantitative models used in economy hardly satisfy the first two laws of thermodynamics, whereas inputs in energy and materials, as well as waste assimilation by the environment, should be made explicit. Entropy variations of the biosphere could then provide a universal metric for the anthropic pressure on the global ecosystem. The main interdisciplinary themes to be addressed during the session will be: Physical constraints on energy technologies; Availability of raw materials; Energy externalities; EROI; Energy and networks (cities, power grids,..); Energy storage and power stability; Intermittence of supply and demand; Multi-energy networks; Physics-economy interface: thermodynamics, statistical physics, social statistics; History of physics/economy hybridization; History of energy transitions; Money and energy in the long run; Stock-flow models and thermodynamics; Spatial scaling of actions; Financial mechanisms for the energy transition; How to implement action from the international level (COP21 and the Paris agreement) to the local scale; Political and institutional context. This document brings together the available presentations (slides): 1 - The energy of IPCC.....or the IPCC of energy (Celine Guivarch); 2 - Physical and economic analysis of energy transition scenarios: Methodology and first results (Sandra Bouneau et al.); 3 - The ThreeME model, The economic effects of a decrease in GES emissions (Gael Callonnec et al.); 4 - On Economics and Energy (Juergen Mimkes); 5 - Natural Resources in the Theory of Production Georgescu-Roegen/Daly versus Solow/Stiglitz (Quentin Couix); 6 - Useful exergy is key in obtaining plausible APFs and in recognizing the role of energy in economic growth: Portugal 1960-2009 (Joao Santos et al.); 7 - Energy and IPCC scenarios (Gilles Ramstein); 8 - System Dynamics Thinking and its contribution to Geophysical Economics: Modeling long-term trends in Structural Raw Materials Supply, Demand and Pricing (Olivier Vidal et al.); 9 - More than an energy issue we have a problem of materials (Jose Halloy); 10 - It's not climate change - it's everything change (Margaret Atwood); 11 - Resources, the Economy and the Ecosystem (and the Seneca Effect) (Ugo Bardi); 12 - grid stability, renewable energy and their turbulent dynamics (Katrin Schmietendorf et al.); 13 - Identifying and Evaluating Low-Carbon Daily Mobility Solutions in French Suburbs, Modeling and results (Nicolas Raillard); 14 - Macroeconomic modeling of energy transitions (accounting for money and energy) (Carey W. King); 15 - Predicting and preventing harmful input fluctuations in transmission grids - project NEtworks and STORage (Stefan Wieland et al.); 16 - Third Industrial Revolution in Hauts-de-France, A way to enhance energy transition at the local scale? (Eric Vidalenc); 17 - Industrial Revolutions, Development Blocks and Energy Transitions (Astrid Kander); 18 - What Thermodynamics can teach us about Economy: theory and practice (Christophe Goupil et al.); 19 - Macroeconomic models with physical and monetary dimension based on constrained dynamics (Oliver Richters); 20 - Energy transition and European energy policy (Adina Crisan-Revol); 21 - Finance and Energy (Mireille Martini); 22 - Summing it up: back to basics (Jean-Marc Jancovici)