ABSTRACT
Back in 1980, some French pioneers, among them Robert Lion, Serge Antoine, and Joël de Rosnay founded the “Comité d’Action pour le Solaire”. Their first task was to draft and publish the “Manifesto for a Solar France”. That visionary text anticipated that by the end of the 20th century, 20 to 25% of all energy needs could be met with the solar, heat, light, wind, water and bio-energies. The backlash of the oil price shock and the choice of nuclear electricity have rapidly buried the ambitions of this text. France refused to look for the Sun and its eclipse was going to last for quite a long time. Then in 1984, the two undersigned of the present text take over the job at the ‘Comité d’Action pour le Solaire’ and keep fighting to keep alive the fantastic idea of the renewable energies. The first is an architect and became the president. The second is a journalist and became the director general of the association and editor in chief of the journal “Action Solaire”. Since those days, we acted like a durable twosome and carried out, in a quasi general indifference, the research of proves of the pertinence and the effectiveness of the “renewables” and the big challenge of information.
