This documentary will probably get people talking.

Tuesday evening, on Arte, is broadcast "The hidden face of green energies", a long investigation which denounces an ecological transition about which we do not know much.

Electric cars and wind turbines may not be as good for the environment as you think. 

What if the promise of green energies was just a lure?

This is the question posed by the documentary

The Hidden Face of Green Energies

, broadcast Tuesday evening at 8:50 p.m. on Arte.

Wind turbines and electric cars have always been presented as solutions to limit the pollution of city centers and the production of greenhouse gases.

But to produce them, rare metals are needed, and their extraction negatively impacts other regions of the globe.

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It would therefore be an ecological mirage that this documentary demonstrates.

"We have multiple forms of pollution which means that entire areas of the planet are polluted and since, anyway, we all live on the same planet, if we clean up the city center with electric cars but the we pollute the rest of the planet, in the end, greenhouse gases do not decrease. This is indeed the paradox of this energy transition ", explains the co-director of the film, Jean-Louis Perez.

Long surveys

The project is based on the book

The War of Rare Metals,

written by Guillaume Pitron, who also co-directed the film.

It took no less than two years to box the film.

Long investigations were necessary and it was complicated to shoot in some parts of the world, especially in China.

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"The purpose of a documentary is to provoke debate. And that of a journalist's job is to say things, to go against received ideas. It's pessimistic and, at the same time, we We are not against the energy transition. We just say to be careful, that it is necessary to know where we are setting foot. It is industrialists who are selling us this energy transition. Perhaps we should also look at this energy transition in its entirety, and perhaps, think differently ", adds Jean-Louis Perez. 

The documentary is already available on Arte.tv and will be available until January 22.