Critics are labeling a new French energy bill that favors the further development of nuclear power as a step backward. The new bill avoids setting expected targets for solar and wind power and other renewals.
France, like other EU countries, intends to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. The new bill is slated to go before the French cabinet early next month and then be submitted to lawmakers. It reaffirms France’s commitment to nuclear power to ensure “energy sovereignty”. France became a leader in nuclear power generation after the 1973 oil crisis. It constructed over fifty nuclear power plants that produce about two-thirds of the country’s electricity.
But those commercial power reactors are ageing, and France has yet to bring the first of a new generation of nuclear power plants online.
The proposed text of the new bill affirms “the sustainable choice of using nuclear energy
as a competitive and carbon-free” source of electricity. It targets the construction of at least six but as many as fourteen new reactors to accomplish the transition to clean energy and meet climate change goals. However, the proposed text sets no such targets for building renewable capacity, in particular wind and solar, whereas previous energy laws did. The Ministry of Energy Transition said “it is false to say that there is no renewables objective” as the government will establish the targets itself later. But that promise does not satisfy activists and experts. “It’s a terrible step back,” said Arnaud Gosse, a lawyer specializing in environmental law. He recalled that in a 2019 law, the French parliament stated the intention to debate the share of different energy sources in overall production.
Gross said that “If you only quantify nuclear power, you do not know the share of non-renewable energies. As a result, nuclear gets prioritized and, depending on remaining coverage needs, non-renewables will be the subject of floating (future) decrees. It’s no longer a mix.”
In order to reach its ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050, studies have repeatedly shown that France will have to massively ramp up the production and share of renewables. After years of delays, France last year voted through two bills designed to speed up progress on nuclear as well as renewables.
Last November, the government announced initial figures proposing a doubling to eighteen gigawatts of offshore wind power in 2035 as well as setting out the annual rate of deployment of solar panels needed to hit seventy-five gigawatts in 2035. France is also aiming for a doubling of onshore wind power capacity to forty gigawatts in 2035.
Jules Nyssen is the president of France’s Renewable Energies Union. He declared himself “stunned” after discovering that renewables targets did not appear in the draft bill. The text promises to make efforts rather than set objectives and uses phrasing such as “tending towards a reduction”.
Anne Bringault is energy transition manager of the Climate Action Network. She said that “this is an extremely significant step backwards, and totally inconsistent with European objectives. Even if the objectives are raised, we no longer have such a strong commitment to them.”
The draft law also eliminates targets for reducing energy consumption via renovation of buildings.