Their feasibility for ten is not established

Engineering schools know well: the time of the great projects smoothly and without consultation with the opinion has passed. It observed this winter in three major public debates: the management of radioactive waste, the construction of the EPR nuclear reactor of third generation at Flamanville and the very high voltage Cotentin-Maine line necessitated by the EPR. For engineers and promoters, challenge actually conceals the infant individualism of the local people attached to the defence of interests. What they call the "Nimby syndrome" (Not In My Back Yard: not in my backyard).

Others see in this syndrome a sign of a crisis of legitimacy affecting the whole policymakers, entrepreneurs to elected officials. In this context, consultation procedures put in place by the public authorities are a part of the solution. According to the President of a firm of environmental communication, "they could restore a relationship of confidence (or less distrust) between the citizens and elected officials, State services or business leaders".

Would the "Nimby syndrome" be about to disappear It is far away! Because this syndrome reflects an apparently ignored reality of many consumers: timidity and the deficit innovative industrial projects. Our development projects are not good enough, they are too coarse, contain too much noise, lack of technical, social and financial sophistication.

Take line projects very high voltage (VHV) ten, subsidiary of EDF in charge of the transport of electricity. They cause the appearance of the famous syndrome with regularity of metronome. In spite of what can say international experts and the regulations, local people reject the VHV lines because they degrade the landscapes and because they produce electromagnetic fields believed to have adverse health consequences (childhood leukemia). Many local associations and advocate the burial of the lines. The project of 400,000 volts Cotentin-Maine lines is no exception to the rule. Engineers to exclamations: "An underground long 150 kilometre line" Pure intellectual exercise! Science-fiction! "What a community representative replied:" you say that it would be a first world, the 150 kilometres. " And why not make the first global "Certainly, perform works at the best price is part of the mandate of ten. However, the impression remains that high encryption developed by engineers for alternatives to the THT lines explained at least in part by their inordinate love for routine methods.

Other innovative options have been proposed, without much more success. "Most innovative solutions combining lines current continuous and capacitors are an order of cost comparable to that of the burial, note the Chairman of the special commission for public debate." Their feasibility for ten is not established. "Some associations have also exceeded ten jurisdiction in denying not only line the Cotentin-Maine but simply the model of centralized nuclear production adopted by EDF. Thus, the Mayenne Nature environment association, which defends an energy strategy based on hydrogen. The actor workbook that it produced in public debate advocated the construction of small and medium-sized stations interconnected by a network of low-voltage buried fuel cell. Hydrogen fueling batteries would be first manufactured by reforming of natural gas, and then by electrolysis of water produced by techniques exploiting renewable energy.

What are the chances that this desire of new technologies is materializing EDF, in collaboration with SFM, installed a stack of type PAFC (Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell), marketed by the American firm Onsi at Chelles (Seine-et-Marne). Put into operation in January 2000, this stack was a 200 social housing complex. It was dismantled in 2005. If it is highly likely that SFM will invest in the market of household batteries supplied natural gas, it is not known if EDF intends to develop a collective production in regional networks. The electrician does not publish any information and its research and Development Department, questioned, remains silent.

But it is perhaps wind energy that the "Nimby syndrome" shows more clearly what it is at the bottom: a deep desire for innovation. The wind, is the seat of a paradox. In France as in Europe, all polls show, wind energy is the subject of massive support on the part of the population. About 90 of the French are favourable. And yet wind projects are very often fought by the local populations. February 1, 2004 to February 1, 2005, 120 building permits were denied by France because of taking insufficient account of landscape and environmental constraints: Visual impact, noise, effects on avifauna.

The professionals of the sector grow a eulogy speech on their activity. This is not a chance that one of the priorities of the research plans of the European Association of wind energy, the European Renewable Energy Centres Agency (an association of renewable energy research centres), the 7th framework programme for research and development of the European Union and the International Energy Agency concerning the environmental and social impacts: reduced visibility of wind turbines and parks, noise reduction, reducing the impact on the avifauna and developing models of public participation. This demonstrates that the industry implicitly includes the meaning of the "Nimby syndrome." She knows that only research, taking account of many parameters, increasing complexity, a commitment to innovation, including in terms of funding, will be able to advance its projects. The example of the Denmark, where as many as 100,000 families have shares in the wind, could be followed.

Because she refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration is not good press among the defenders of the environment. Yet this same administration may well have taken note of what French makers seem not ready to admit: "In the coming century, it is not endless legal procedures or the bureaucratic regulations that will bring the environmental, but rather progress technology and innovation." The "Nimby" say to roughly the same thing. Can only wish that the promoters intend.