It is a little-known document, which contains the essential bricks of the French energy and climate strategy. France’s energy roadmap, called in bureaucratic language multiannual energy programming (PPE), outlines the country’s prospects for the next ten years. Adopted just a year ago, when France was in full containment, the 2019-2028 orientation is already compromised.
It plans to significantly reduce energy consumption, start a decline in nuclear power and rapidly develop renewable energies. But, unless public policies are revised quickly and massively, these objectives will not be met. “Our ambition is to get there”, we still assure the Ministry of Ecological Transition, where we recognize that“We have a lot to catch up”.
Solar very late
This is the main black point of this roadmap. At the end of 2020, the sector passed the 10 gigawatts (GW) milestone of installed capacity (2.5% of current electricity production). To stay the course of the PPE, they must have doubled within two years. And, by 2028, they are expected to have almost quadrupled. In other words: France must triple the capacity connected each year. Impossible, worries the network manager, RTE, in its latest report.
“We are really moving away from this trajectory, while France has all the potential to achieve the objectives that it has set itself”, also notes Rosaline Corinthien, Managing Director of Engie France Renouvelables. In particular, procedures considered too long. “Year after year, the volume of queued projects increases steadily, observes Jean-Louis Bal, president of the Renewable Energies Union (SER). But the installed power is not increasing: there is a bottleneck in the examination of authorizations. “
To this must be added an increasingly complicated access to land for developers, the deposit of degraded land – which in France must be privileged – gradually reaching its limits. Several projects that require the use of forest plots are also the subject of local disputes, as in Gironde or in the Hautes-Alpes, an additional difficulty for photovoltaics.
Onshore wind power on track, but too slowly
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