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GUILLAUME PITRON

French journalist, and documentary maker, author of “The Rare Metals War: The dark side of green energy and digital technologies”

  • He has written two books: (The Rare Metals War: The dark side of green energy and digital technologies (2019)), and The Dark Cloud: how the digital world is costing the earth
  • His books have been published in 10 languages and over 15 countries
  • From green energy to digital technology to smart farming and so-called "smart" borders, Pitron is staking his claim at the forefront of the technology revolutions by examining the economic, geopolitical and environmental issues they raise
  • Pitron covers diverse issues, such as the limits of our planet's resources, the challenges of shifting to a circular economy, China's technological rise, Europe's energy sovereignty and the upheavals caused by artificial intelligence
  • His work has garnered nearly thirty French and foreign awards

     

Author, journalist, and documentary maker, Guillaume Pitron is known for his investigations into the economical, political, and environmental issues of the global economy and digital transition.

He has written two books, published in France by Les Liens qui Libèrent (LLL) and translated into some fifteen countries: La Guerre des métaux rares. La face cachée de la transition énergétique et numérique (2018) (The Rare Metals War: The dark side of green energy and digital technologies (2019)), and L’Enfer numérique. Voyage au bout d’un Like (2021) (The Dark Cloud : how the digital world is costing the earth – English edition publication in May 2023). He has also co-written the dystopian work Promethium (2021), which foreshadows the fully “green” world in the year 2043.

His work for the print media includes Le Monde diplomatique, Géo, National Geographic and The Washington Quarterly. His dozen documentaries have aired on the major French TV networks and in twenty other countries (including on Arte, Amazon Prime, Al-Jazeera and ZDF).

From green energy to digital technology to smart farming and so-called “smart” borders, Pitron is staking his claim at the forefront of the technology revolutions by examining the economic, geopolitical and environmental issues they raise. Farming, mining and energy resources make up an ideal access point for questioning these changes. He has turned in close to a hundred reports in about forty countries — on rare earth and graphite mining conditions in China, the economic impact of oil in Alaska, and the new geopolitical dependencies created by robotic farming. They challenge the myths and utopias about current technological growth fostering environmental virtue, digital lifestyles, economic growth uncoupled from resource consumption, social and human progress, and more.

Taking this approach, Pitron covers diverse issues, such as the limits of our planet’s resources, the challenges of shifting to a circular economy, China’s technological rise, Europe’s energy sovereignty and the upheavals caused by artificial intelligence.

His work has garnered nearly thirty French and foreign awards, including the Erik-Izraelewicz Prize from France’s leading daily newspaper Le Monde for an investigative report on the decline of the French forestry sector (2017); the economic book prize (2018) for La Guerre des métaux rares. La face cachée de la transition énergétique et numérique; the 2022 Veolia Foundation Environmental Book Prize for L’Enfer numérique. Voyage au bout d’un Like; and Best Long-Form Documentary at the American Golden Picture International Film Festival (US, 2021) for The Dark Side of Green Energies.

Guillaume Pitron is regularly invited to speak at international institutions (International Monetary Fund, European Commission, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO]), universities and prestigious institutions (INSEAD and HEC business schools, University of Ottawa), governments (French Senate, French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Quebec Ministry of the Environment), the non-profit/non-governmental sector (World Wide Fund for Nature, community colleges), book festivals (Brisbane Writers Festival, Internazionale a Ferrara) and TEDx (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks.

He makes frequent appearances on French and international media outlets and has been interviewed by Le Monde, the BBC, Bloomberg TV, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Radio Canada, la Radio-Télévision suisse (RTS), El País, La Repubblica, RAI, The Globe & Mail, de Volkskrant, the South China Morning Post, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His views are also quoted by the US Senate Committee on Energy and Resources.

In addition, Pitron is a research associate at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) in Paris, and serves as an Executive in Residence at the INSEAD Business School/MBA Sustainability Business Initiative.

He holds a postgraduate degree (DEA) from the Universities of Paris and a master’s degree in law from Georgetown University (US).

Guillaume tailors each presentation to the needs of his audience and is not limited to the topics listed below. Please ask us about any subject that interests you:

  • Critical raw materials for the energy transition and AI
  • Green Energy
  • Ecological, economic and geopolitical challenges 
  • Digital technology
  • “Smart” borders
  • Environmental, economic and geopolitical challenges of the electric vehicles revolution
  • Circular economy 
  • Energy, material and carbon impacts of the digital and AI revolution and solutions to mitigate them
  • Geopolitics of digital infrastructures (data centers, cables, satellites)
     

The Rare Metals War: The Dark Side of Clean Energy and Digital Technologies 

Is the shift to renewable energy and digital devices going to free us from severe pollution, material shortages, and military tensions?

Rare metals are essential to electric vehicles, fighter jets, wind turbines, and solar panels, and also to our smartphones, computers, tablets, and other everyday connected objects. But consumers know very little about how they are mined and traded, or the environmental, economic, and geopolitical costs of this dependence.

This book reveals the dark side of the world that awaits us. It is an undercover tale of a technological odyssey that has promised much, and a look behind the scenes. Behind it all lurks China, which has captured the lion’s share of the ownership and processing of rare metals we now can’t do without. Drawing on six years of research across a dozen countries, this book shows that by breaking free of fossil fuels, we are in fact setting ourselves up for a new dependence―on rare metals that have become vital to our new ecological and digital society.

The Dark Cloud: how the digital world is costing the earth 

A gripping new investigation into the underbelly of digital technology, which reveals not only how costly the virtual world is, but how damaging it is to the environment.

A simple ‘like’ sent from our smartphones mobilises what will soon constitute the largest infrastructure built by man. This small notification, crossing the seven operating layers of the Internet, travels around the world, using submarine cables, telephone antennas, and data centres, going as far as the Arctic Circle.

It turns out that the ‘dematerialised’ digital world, essential for communicating, working, and consuming, is much more tangible than we would like to believe. Today, it absorbs 10 per cent of the world’s electricity and represents nearly 4 per cent of the planet’s carbon dioxide emissions. We are struggling to understand these impacts, as they are obscured to us in the mirage of ‘the cloud’.

Some telling numbers:

  • If digital technology were a country, it would be the third-highest consumer of electricity behind China and the United States.
  • An email with a large attachment consumes as much energy as a lightbulb left on for one hour.
  • Every year, streaming technology generates as much greenhouse gas as Spain — close to 1 per cent of global emissions.
  • One Google search uses as much electricity as a lightbulb left on for up to two minutes.
  • All of humanity produces five exabytes of data per day, equivalent to what we consumed from the very beginnings of the internet to 2003 — an amount that would fill 10 million Blu-ray discs which, piled up, would be as high as the Eiffel Tower.

At a time of the deployment of 5G, connected cars, and artificial intelligence, The Dark Cloud — the result of an investigation carried out over two years on four continents — reveals the anatomy of a technology that is virtual only in name. Under the guise of limiting the impact of humans on the planet, it is already asserting itself as one of the major environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.

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