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Media center : Glossary

  • barrel

    this has become the international standard for the oil trade. It came from the use of the 42-gallon (U.S.) wine barrel in the first oil fields of Pennsylvania. In the metric system, a barrel corresponds to a little less than 159 liters.

  • biofuel

    solid, liquid or gaseous matter of plant or animal origin used to produce energy for transportation.

  • biogas

    essentially methane originating from waste of urban (wastewater, household refuse) or animal (livestock excrement) origin.

  • biogas plants

    a plant in which wet or liquid biomass (treatment plant sludge, pig slurry, etc.) is converted into methane by anaerobic digestion. The methane is then converted into usable energy (electricity, heat).

  • biomass

    used for energy, it includes vegetables from farming (carbon-rich plants such as corn and sugarcane) and organic waste. The latter can be solid (industrial, agricultural or domestic) or liquid (wastewater, animal waste).

  • black-out

    starting from a purely local failure, a widespread failure across the entire network, plunging, depending on the time of day, an entire region into darkness.

  • Bq: BECQUEREL

    radioactivity is measured in becquerels. This quantifies the number of radioactive nuclei disintegrations that occur every second in a sample.

  • BTU-British Thermal Unit

    the international energy unit for natural gas defined as the quantity of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit at normal atmospheric pressure. 1 BTU = 1,055 joules.

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True/False

The only way to lessen European dependency on Russian gas is to build major pipelines that bypass Russia.