Empirical essays on the energy transition.

Summary The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the energy transition. In particular, we are interested in technological learning as a driver of endogenous technological change, the main vector of the transition. In the first chapter, we show the difficulty of quantifying learning effects and we identify a set of factors whose inclusion can improve the reliability of the estimates. We also show that, although incorporating technological learning into energy-environment-economy models can pose methodological and mathematical problems, it can improve our understanding of the dynamics of adoption and diffusion of energy innovations. In the second chapter, we focus on the issue of competition between competing energy technologies. We show that dynamic learning effects and static scale effects are responsible for the current situation of energy system lock-in on conventional energy sources. In the third chapter, we focus on the controversial case of nuclear energy as a possible future energy alternative. We analyze the question of its competitiveness for the case of France. We show that learning effects improve competitiveness but that long construction times can hamper it. In the fourth chapter, we focus on the issue of primary uranium supply. We show that uranium prices have a significant positive effect on production and exploration expenditures but not on reserves. We also show that production and exploration expenditures are more sensitive to a price increase than to a price decrease.