France has been very skeptical about 5G for several years, but this time the "conspiracy" theory on duty comes from an official government body, thatHaut Advice pour le Climat (High Council for the Climate), a scientific committee personally appointed by President Emmanuel Macron two years ago. The pool, made up of 12 scientists, has issued a surprising and worrying verdict: in a 32-page document it is asserted that the new mobile network technology, which will enable the next industrial revolution, that of the Internet of things and Artificial Intelligence , will have a significant cost to the environment.
Going into detail, the report explains that the spread of 5G will lead to a greater expenditure of energy, which will inevitably in turn lead to an increase in CO2 emissions: "Energy consumption will increase by between 16 TWh and 40 TWh from here to 2030, i.e. 3%/8% of the total energy consumed in France in 2019”, write the experts. Translated into CO2 emissions, it would mean that the new telephone infrastructure would generate from 2,7 to 6,7 million tons of CO2 more, compared to the 15 million tons emitted by the entire French technology industry in 2020: a leap between +18% and even a hypothetical +44%, in the worst case scenario.
Clearly, if the energy surplus were to come from renewable sources or from nuclear power, the problem would not exist. But as things stand, this is the forecast, subject to some unknowns which could in turn make the bill less heavy for the environment, such as the arrival of a new generation of smartphones. However, there is already controversy on this too, they would be much more expensive and consumers would ultimately pay the bill.
For France such a hitch would be really difficult to digest, especially after the president Macron has repeatedly spent himself in favor of the ecological cause: engaged in the forefront of sharing the Paris climate agreements (on which he has also tried several times to convince former US president Donald Trump), the French head of state has even launched a referendum to include the ecological transition in the text of the Constitution. Thus making it not only an important objective, but a real value defended by the constitutional charter.
