The French government's bill to accelerate the development of renewable energy will be debated in the Assemblée Nationale starting on Monday, December 5, as the war in Ukraine and maintenance delays in nuclear plants means France could see power cuts this winter. Although the bill was passed by the right-leaning Sénat on November 5 by an overwhelming majority, Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher will need to find a new majority in the Assemblée, where no lone political force has an outright advantage.
The renewable energy bill – the only one devoted to environmental issues presented in this legislative session – is an attempt by the government to make up for some of France's delay in deploying renewable energies. In 2020, renewables represented only 19.3% of gross final energy consumption, compared to the promised 23.7%. France was fined several hundred million euros this year for not having reached its objectives. And it is still not on track to respect its energy roadmap. According to the scenarios of the French electricity grid operator RTE, renewable energy production must increase massively and rapidly if the country wishes to meet its climate objectives, even if nuclear power production continues to play an important role.
"France must be the first nation to exit fossil fuels before 2050," President Macron insisted in an interview with Le Parisien on December 4. He characterized the reasoning of the bill as "invest, simplify rules, and accelerate projects, because speed is basically the key for both the climate and appealing" to investors. The bill aims to halve the time required to deploy these low-carbon energies by limiting the options for legal recourse against projects, promoting the deployment of offshore wind power, and increasing the number of installation sites, such as highway rest areas.
Conservative opposition to onshore wind
In order to get votes or even abstentions from the opposition, the presidential coalition will have to deal with opposition from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) and much of the conservative Les Républicains (LR), who have previously been helpful for the government and its relative majority at the Assemblée. "We are reaching out to LR," said the president of the sustainable development committee, Jean-Marc Zulesi, "But the difficulty is that they are not willing to compromise or offer suggestions that do not diminish the ambition of the text."
On the right of the Assemblée, MPs see this bill as a blank check for the expansion of wind power, which they says destroys French countryside landscapes. "We must be responsible, but the spirit of responsibility must not weaken our absolute priorities. And our priority here is the social acceptability of onshore wind energy," said MP Antoine Vermorel-Marques of LR. Following the example of the LR senators, who did not succeed in getting them adopted, a group of right-wing MPs filed several amendments to establish a right of veto for mayors and a ban on offshore wind turbines within 40 kilometers of the coast.
Faced with the expected hostility of the LR group, the government has held meetings with the left-wing forces united in the NUPES alliance and the miscellaneous centrists in the LIOT group. "This is the first time that there has been a real discussion and not just a sham," said Cyrielle Chatelain, president of the Green group. "If for once we can obtain gains, we'll go for them." This willingness to compromise is shared by the Parti Socialiste, which has a "relatively favorable view" of this bill, and even among left wing La France Insoumise (LFI), which wavers between voting against and abstaining. On the left, only the Communists are determined to reject the bill.
But each constituent party of the left-wing alliance (the NUPES) could still reverse its position, depending on how the debates go, and despite successfully adding dozens of amendments during the committee debates. Aurélie Trouvé of LFI complained that the government is giving pride of place "to the free market" and "large private corporations" in the deployment of renewable energy. "If this is about suppressing public sector involvement and environmental law, it would be a dangerous development," she warned.
In this delicate balance between the massive acceleration of renewable energies and the preservation of biodiversity, the tensions will revolve around Article 4 of the bill. The article recognizes "an imperative reason of major public interest" to facilitate the deployment of renewable energy projects by limiting options for legal recourses. But left-wing MPs see this provision as a threat to ecosystems. "At a time when we're facing a huge climate challenge and a massive extinction of species, we have to pursue both objectives," Ms. Chatelain argued. The government will propose a new formulation of the disputed article, after the original wording was rejected by the left, right, and far right in the committee. "The Greens and the LFI are stuck with their own paradox – they want 100% of renewable energies but they don't always want to give themselves the means to go for this goal," criticized Pierre Cazeneuve of the presidential party Renaissance.
'Acceleration zones'
The geographic aspect of these renewable energy projects will also be a main point of discussion, including the establishment of "acceleration zones," defined by mayors for the implementation of renewable energy. But many questions remain. How will these zones allow projects to be deployed more quickly? What will happen while waiting for them to be defined, which will take several months or even years?
While the presidential coalition says it is "optimistic but watchful" about the adoption of this bill, some of the sector's stakeholders fear that it will miss its initial target. "We have a bill to accelerate renewables, but there is now a non-zero risk that it will end as an act to delay them," said Jules Nyssen, president of the Renewable Energies Syndicate. In a letter published on Sunday, the French wind energy organization FEE also warned MPs that if this bill ultimately slows the development of renewable energies, "France will have legislated its failure to guarantee its security, independence and energy sovereignty."
Other touchy issues will be debated, such as the rise of "agrovoltaics," which allows the use of solar panels on agricultural land, and the sharing of revenue from these renewable energy projects between local authorities and the residents involved. But with only 30 hours scheduled for the bill in the legislative timetable, MPs will have a hard time covering the 28 articles and dealing with the 3,000 amendments filed for this bill.