ACADEMY
PUBLICATIONS
07 March 2023
Decarbonisation of the aviation sector through the production of sustainable fuels, Report and Position paper
In October 2021, the Energy Division of the National Academy of Technologies of France launched a study on the decarbonisation of aviation, and more specifically on the large-scale production of sustainable fuels.
18 January 2023
Hydrogen: fundamentals and strategies in China and France/Europe for decarbonizing the economy
In this report, the National Academy of Technology of France and the Chinese Academy of Engineering jointly studied the potential role and uses of low-carbon hydrogen to reach the net-zero emission target of our economies. This report also analyses the whole value chain from production to end-use taking into account innovation, technological and economical aspects including safety issues. As the Chinese and European contexts differ, so are the roadmaps examined in this report. Access the report from the “Download” section (Picture: ©Alexander Limbach – stock.adobe.com)
19 July 2021
Covid-19 crisis : Using the Sustainable Development Goals to restart while ensuring sustainability and resiliency
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the French Academy of Technology has been piloting an inter-academic Working Group “Using the SDGs to restart while ensuring sustainability and resiliency”, mobilizing participants from the Academy of Technology, the Academy of Agriculture and the Academy of Sciences, since April 2020. This collection of notes is intended to be a milestone in a reflection that is still ongoing, and makes public the work already done by the group.
11 May 2021
Innovation in the food industries: impacts of the digital revolution
The food industries represent a link in the food system that extends from agricultural production to the consumption stages. These industries, which convert raw materials into foodstuffs, implement transformation and assembly processes to obtain foodstuffs with constant properties. They occupy the first industrial place in France in terms of employment and turnover. They are made up of a few international groups and, above all, of thousands of small and medium-sized companies and very small businesses that try to take into account multiple criteria to produce attractive, safe and healthy food using environmentally friendly processes. The French food industries are facing […]
10 March 2021
French electricity demand – outlook to 2050
In recent years, annual electricity consumption in France amounted to around 470 TWh, 90% being decarbonised; at the same time, oil and natural gas consumption has been around 900 TWh and 450 TWh respectively. At present, electricity accounts for only a quarter of energy consumption. Energy savings alone will not be enough to move away from oil and natural gas: as equally anticipated for Germany and Great Britain, French reliance on electricity will have to increase significantly to replace oil and gas consumption. Various recent projections underestimate this growth. However, erroneous assumptions would affect the security of our energy supply […]
28 October 2020
Industry of the Future: The Ramp-up in Technological Competencies of SMEs. The Case of Industrial Companies
The report of the National Academy of Technologies of France on the industry of the future, as well as a number of economic studies, show that large French industrial companies are progressing well, and that on the whole the major industrial customers and their first-level suppliers have had positive operating results. ISEs, of which there are still not enough, and most SMEs, which have been able to adapt their strategic positioning and upgrade their industrial facilities, are performing well. However, a considerable number of SMEs and VSEs (or MICs) are not in this enviable position and this subject is at […]
15 October 2020
Archiving Big Data beyond 2040: DNA as a candidate
Datacenters, including the “cloud”, store humanity’s digital big data on hard disks and magnetic tapes whose limited lifespan requires expensive copies to be made every five to seven years; they devour resources such as land, electricity, water and scarce materials. In comparison, storage at a molecular scale in a polymer such as DNA could have a density ten million times higher, last ten thousand times longer without the need for periodic copying, and consume very little energy. Indeed, DNA is stable at ordinary temperatures for several millennia and can be easily duplicated or deliberately destroyed. The required technologies already exist. […]
30 July 2020
The role of hydrogen in a decarbonised economy
The National Academy of Technologies of France unveils its report presenting the major challenges for hydrogen to play a major role in the ecological transition and industrial development. It makes fourteen recommendations grouped into four themes and defines priorities for the uses of decarbonated hydrogen, taking into account the often-neglected economic aspects. It recommends the development of a French and European industry covering the entire chain from production to utilisation of hydrogen, not only targeting home markets but world markets. Finally, it recommends intensifying the Research and Development effort. The objective of a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions, or […]
15 June 2020
COVID-19 Crisis – Accelerating the digital transformation: for a more agile and less dependent France
NATF Position paper The situation of confinement into which our country and a large part of the planet has been plunged has led to an acceleration in the use of digital techniques to compensate for the limitation of travelling. This acceleration has been accompanied by a remarkable appropriation of the available digital resources by citizens as well as by many private and public organisations. New uses and new applications have proliferated in many fields such as health, education or economic activities such as work organisation or mass distribution. In these areas the initiatives that have emerged go far beyond palliative […]
12 May 2020
For selective confinement assisted by digital tracing
Open Letter For selective confinement assisted by digital tracing In the absence of a vaccine against Covid19 and treatments to cure this disease, we had to temporarily accept the systematic confinement of the population with the aim of slowing the spread of the epidemic and avoid the saturation of our healthcare system. This could only be achieved at the cost of our freedom of movement, the functioning of the economy, our material and psychological well-being and the quality of education received by our children. In order to put an end to this confinement without triggering a resurgence of the epidemic […]