During his address on June 14, 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of the country's ecological reconstruction, with the implementation of a modernization plan based around thermal renovation of buildings, less polluting transport, and support for green industries. To mark European Sustainable Energy Week, from June 22 to 26, LNE reports on some of its projects.
Faced with ever-changing societal challenges, particularly environmental ones, one of LNE's missions is to anticipate the measurement needs associated with technological developments and society's new expectations. To help society and industry make the transition to a greener energy future, LNE's teams are already actively involved in the various initiatives announced by the Chairman: thermal renovation, less polluting transport, and support for green industries.
Thermal renovation: improving building insulation
Today, building roofs are responsible for almost 30 % of heat loss. In order to reduce energy consumption and undertake or encourage thermal renovation, it is necessary to diagnose these energy losses. Using a twin-engine airplane equipped with an infrared scanner, LNE regularly carries out aerial mapping on behalf of local authorities to identify energy losses from roofs.
As part of the Innovip project, LNE is working to develop an insulation product that is less fragile, easier to manufacture and install, and with a lower market price than solutions of the same type currently on the market. LNE is making its expertise and testing facilities available to manufacturers in the fields of characterization of thermal properties, fire behavior of materials and characterization of nanomaterials, to support the development of this new insulating product.
Cleaner transport: the electric vehicle
Hydrogen-powered vehicles are a good way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, provided the hydrogen is produced by renewable means. However, the fuel cells that power them can deteriorate rapidly if certain impurities are present in the hydrogen. To guarantee the quality of this energy source, LNE has been working alongside industrialists and academics on the quality of the hydrogen used as fuel in fuel cell electric vehicles, in order to best support their adoption by society.
Green industries: photovoltaic energy
In today's green economy, photovoltaics is a booming industry. As part of its drive to renew its energy model, France has already set itself the target of doubling the installed capacity of renewable energies by 2018. In this context, photovoltaic solar power plays a major role alongside wind power.
One of the challenges is to identify the areas best exposed to solar radiation, on roofs and on the ground, to maximize the installation of photovoltaic panels. On behalf of various local authorities, LNE therefore carries out "solar cadastres" to identify the best exposed locations and the best candidate targets for a photovoltaic installation project on an area-wide scale.
To support the industry and photovoltaic panel manufacturers, LNE has also taken part in a research project aimed at increasing and better controlling the performance of multi-junction solar cells, which already offer much higher yields than silicon PV cells.
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