HAS the time when citizens are preparing to vote, on June 9, for the European elections and when the fight against climate change is at the top of the concerns of French voters (37%, compared to 27% of Europeans, according to the Eurobarometer of April 2024), just behind the fight against poverty, never the end of the road leading to “ great transformation » energy of the country, according to the formula of Jean Pisani-Ferry and Selma Mahfouz, did not seem so far away.
All the important texts (Energy-climate programming law; multi-annual energy programming; national low carbon strategy; national plan for adaptation to climate change) for imagining the country’s energy future have been shelved, one after the other. ‘other, by the government. To the democratic debate on our energy choices, the executive obviously prefers the technocratic tranquility of decrees, convinced that it would be impossible to debate the country’s energy options without falling into a “war of religion” between pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear.
Without debate, the direction to follow in energy matters was therefore decided by the President of the Republic, upon his Belfort speech, February 10, 2022, recognizing the relaunch of nuclear power and the share of renewable energies (EnR) in our future energy mix. But this choice by the government reflects a double error of analysis. Error regarding the balance of power in Parliament, far from being unfavorable to nuclear power; error, too, regarding the strong symbolic dimension of a democratic deliberation on the energy trajectory that the country intends to follow.
The essential renewable energies
By conviction, because it is the only way, in the short term, to reduce our CO emissions2 under the Paris Agreement of November 2015 and to guarantee manufacturers cheap energy, or out of pragmatism, given France’s delay in the development of renewable energy, all French political leaders and experts admit: By 2050, our energy model must reconcile renewable energies and atoms.
If nuclear power is intended to remain a major component of our energy model for a long time, however, only the development of renewable energies will allow us to transform our energy system. For what ? Because the new reactors will not produce electrons for fifteen years and they will partly replace the old power plants which will have had to be shut down by then.
Debating our energy future is not an option, but a necessity. A debate in Parliament would be important to ensure that the rules and financial resources required are long-term. Agreeing on the financing of new reactors and renewable energy would not be unreasonable either, at a time when the debate on public debt is heating up and EDF is revising its estimates upwards (+ 30% for the six EPRs) .
You have 54.77% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.