A english blog from a INSA student

During the first week-end of december, I went to a convention organized by an association called Christians and oil peak. it's a group of research about links between the ecological problem and the christianity.

I went there because I think that the confrontation of these both topics will lead to something unusual but rich.

The question that leads this association is "Which spiritual ressources to face up to the run out of natural ressources?"

The first speeche was told by Oliver REY, a searcher at CNRS and maths teacher. He spoke about the notion of scale in real world. We assume in our modern world that humain are able to do everythings thanks to technologies. But he said that it exists a scale for humain being. Indeed modern cities with huge supermarket, fast underground... aren't in the humain scale.Our humain size, our walk speed say something about our nature. To illustrate this notion of scale, he took the example of the size. If we were two times higher, we would be four times bigger, but our legs won't be able to support us anymore.He considered that we might come back to a civilisation at humain size.

One other topic was the necessity to associate again the "hard science" like maths or physics and "social science" like philosophy or litterature. The french university is divided into parts, but we have to consider ethic when we study law or engineering. Its a modern fact to dissociate subject and it's not obvious.

Of course, the political questions was broached. There was Mrs. MOREL DARLEUX, secretary of ecosocialism at Front de Gauche. She denounced the infinite growth in a finite world and said that fossil energy can be considered as drugs for the capitalism. Mr LEPESANT, a philosophy teacher, quite fun indeed, impressed me a lot. He perceived three main axes to transform our society. 1/ Give absolute priority to ecological questions. 2/Break off from our conception of illimited liberty, putting liberties after responsability. (He asked a question that interested me a lot: In our democraty, who represents the "missing" like future generations, animals,vegetals...) 3/Refind the taste of simplicity. He asked for a floor salary but associate with a ceiling salary. The reason for this requirement was "How can people can live together where there are so large gap of money between them?" He spoke about the concept of convivial cities where everyone lives at the same rythm than the poorest.

Another speeche was given by Mr. REVOL, a theologian and biologist at Catholic University of Lyon. He tryed to express the christian vision of the earth. How God makes us co-creator of this nature, and how the christian faith can help us to protect the environnement in changing our materialist and industrialist vision of the nature into love look.

I wasn't there during the two days but these speeches have been broadcasted.

You can heard them here:

http://www.chretiens-et-pic-de-petrole.org/colloque-2014/interventions/

During the reading of the book called 100 pioneer for the planet which make a census of green solutions, I met severals time, the name of PELAMIS.

But what is Pelamis?

It's a new product who is able to transform waves into electricity. This technology is for me very interesting (it could be for me a field where i want to work as engineer) and i will try to explain more about it with the next lines:

A pelamis is a long snake from 150 meters long and 3.5 meters wide.

The wawes move cylinder who are links by piston. The movement of comings and comings press and pull these pistons and produce electricity. The following video give a good illustration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0mzrbfzUpM&feature=player_embedded

In my opinion this solution is today the best in the ecological point of view because it don't really disturb the wildlife and it doesn't have a big impact on the landscape.

I don't really know if this technology is cheap but just few information find on the net.

The price of the first pelamis farm in portugal cost 9 million euros to produce 2.25 MW (it's the electricity consume by 1500 family of middle consumption).

In comparaison the price of a nuclear power plant is  2.5 million euros to produce 1GW(1000MW) (source internet:http://www.leseoliennes.be/economieolien/investisscentrale.htm) (Mwh =power, Mw = energy)

Nuclear power is the cheapest and the most ecological anyway if we futfill to make it sure.

Anyway this wawe power solution should be improve in the same way than windmill which improve a lot of their technicals solutions to produce more energy.

To Finish more photographies on: 

http://www.pelamiswave.com/gallery?category=videos&page=1