EDF, the main French energy company and official electricity supplier for Paris-2024, reiterated a few days ago its promise to provide "100% renewable energy" for next summer's Olympic and Paralympic Games, a commitment that he plans to certify by blockchain.
“Our objective from the start, when we applied, was to have 100% renewable energy,” recalled François-Xavier Bonaillee, director of business development and partnerships for Paris 2024, during a press briefing on Tuesday at Paris.
Paris's candidacy for the Games dates from 2015, when there was more talk of the closure of the aging Fessenheim nuclear power plant than of a relaunch of the atom, which partly explains this emphasis on renewable energies. in the country of nuclear power.
“The volume of electricity that will be used during the 2024 Games will be covered by specific certificates of origin, from eight selected production facilities,” explained Birgit Fratzke-Weiss, Ile-de-France sales director of EDF.
While the so-called "guarantee of origin" certificates attest that a quantity of renewable electricity equivalent to that which was sold to the customer has been injected into the electricity network, EDF this time claims a more refined system.
It promises “hourly concomitance” between production on one side and consumption on the other side, “certified hour by hour, thanks to an innovative tool developed by EDF teams, called TrackElec”.
“Hour by hour, the renewable electricity production of these eight sites is deposited in a blockchain”, or chain of blocks, a register shared continuously between thousands of users and in theory impossible to tamper with, explained Ms. Fratzke- Weiss.
The tool, based on blockchain technology developed externally, specifically for the world of energy, by an organization called Energy Web Foundation, "ensures that there is a good match between production and consumption of the sites and when there is a correspondence between the two, generates a certificate of time concomitance", added the commercial director.
The eight electricity production sites, six wind farms and two photovoltaic fields, are spread throughout France. Among these sites, we find in particular the Côte de Jade wind farm, in Vendée, one of the oldest in France, or the Lazer photovoltaic power plant (Hautes-Alpes), one of the first floating photovoltaic parks in Europe.
“We should be able to cover 80% of this consumption by certificates with a concurrent time,” indicated EDF. For the rest, "there will be certificates of origin, but it will not be reconciled hour by hour", according to Ms Fratzke-Weiss.
EDF has also installed renewable electricity sources on the Games sites themselves, such as in the athletes' village or on the aquatic site.
The roof of the latter includes 4.600 m2 of solar panels, "which will cover 20% of the site's electricity needs", also equipped with a heat recovery system to heat the water in the pools, detailed Franck Chauveau , development director of major Ile-de-France projects for EDF.
