A short review of 2020 in 3 bridge-building songs

After a year like 2020, which has undoubtedly been quite unusual and ‘isolating’, what better way to conclude the year than to celebrate what unifies us ?

People all over the world turn to music when they look for hope and for a new outlook. Moreover, music truly has a unifying power that can build bridges.

 

One of this years’ smoothest musical revelations that crossed borders was the Crucchi Gang project, in which German musicians re-recorded their songs in Italian, gifting us for example with "Carta bianca", a translation by Element of Crime of their song “Weisses Papier”… A beautiful new version of a wonderful song, which highlights the power of each language to give a different ‘color’ to a song…

A similar transformation was experienced by Bilderbuch's "Bungalow", Sophie Hunger's "Walzer für niemand" and Wir sind Helden's "Nur ein Wort", just to name a few. Perhaps the Crucchi Gang were inspired by earlier Italian adventures of the Austrian band Wanda, for instance the Italian version of their song "Auseinandergehn ist schwer"...?

 

A more extroverted musical bridge-builder may have been this year’s new “Imagine your Korea” campaign. It may just be a personal preference, but their Seoul-focused clip seems to be most well-designed one out of the series, combining awkwardly blissful music with wonderfully weird dance moves (not too desperately seeking to go viral, yet still immediately likeable), set on touristic hotspots in Korea. 

Granted, it is a commercial, so one should probably keep a critical distance and not confuse it with art… 

But then again : in this year of 2020, which has brought us unprecedented peaks of online streaming (music, news, home fitness, entertainment), this ad was sometimes more delightful than the YouTube clips that it interrupted. 

 

A more gospel-inspired song has touched people around the world this year with a message of hope and unity, and with viral dance moves : the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge not only inspired  unity throughout countless adaptations across the global, starting in South Africa (without any choreography, which was apparently added to the song at a later stage, just for fun, in Angola), and soon spreading to everyone, from German nurses to Venezuelan nuns. It can also be argued that the lyrics of the song refer to the biblical (and, ultimatelty, universal) dream of a world full of peace, happiness and unity…. Which might help to explain the song’s success in this very particular year of 2020.

Low-carbon heating in France : warming up to District Heating

By JJB

"District Heating" is a technology allowing several large buildings, neighbourhoods or even entire cities to share common heat sources, which produce heat centrally and then deliver it to each individual home through dedicated heat networks. While the general public may sometimes associate district heating more with Scandinavian, Central- or Eastern European countries, France is also "warming up" to this technology.

Indeed, France's district heating systems have seen an increased share of renewable heat production in recent years, and the government is looking to expand the use of low-carbon district heating even further (the goal being a 5-fold increase by 2030, compared to 2012 levels). According to a recent study, this would also enable the country to tap into local resources in order to create local employment, while also protecting consumers from price fluctuations.

A commented article can be found here. The full detailed paper can be downloaded here ; even though it is written in French, the authors can also be contacted in English in case of any questions.

How does Europe define "Clean Hydrogen" ?

The European Union and several of its member states are moving forward to promote clean hydrogen as a new energy carrier for a fossil-free future.  

However, as argued by JJ Bürger in an article for the French utility-centered magazine Usine Nouvelle, the European Union's approach is still too vague, leaving it up to the individual states to define what "clean hydrogen" actually means and how it should be produced. 

The discrepancy among the national approaches hinders the creation of a EU-wide common vision for clean hydrogen technologies, as argued in the article, even though Europe's position on hydrogen could have the potential to set international standards for the emerging market of clean hydrogen.

While the above-mentioned article is written in French, please do not hesitate to reach out through the comments below if you seek further information in English.

Integrating flexibility into the power grid of tomorrow

In order for the Energy Transition to succeed, the energy system of the future needs to embrace flexibility in a way that would have seemed unbelievable just a few decades ago.
Indeed, an increasing share of the electricity production will be provided by intermittent renewable resources. In addition, power consumption may become more and more flexible, due to new use cases such as e-mobility or smart homes.

In this context, it is interesting to note that research projects are increasingly focused on enabling real-life applications of Energy flexibility. For instance, the InterFlex project has recently published its final results.
InterFlex was a 3-year project, running from early 2017 to end of 2019, which investigated the use of local flexibilities to relieve distribution grid constraints.
The project aimed to develop solutions for the integration of distributed energy resources and to prepare the electric system for new uses, including electric mobility.
Six industry-scale demonstrators were set up in 5 participating countries. 

The variety of the approaches investigated by InterFlex reflects the diversity of the European energy systems and particularly of the grid infrastructure. The project’s use cases, tested in its six demonstrators in five countries, have provided their individual input to five innovation streams:

• Local Flexibility Markets
• Demand response & Customer Empowerment
• Smart Functions & Grid Automation
• Cross-Energy-Carrier Synergies
• Multi-Service Storage & Islanding

Further information is available by clicking on the above links, or by browsing through the InterFlex media Library, including videos, project deliverables and scientific publications.