The National Assembly voted on Thursday a key article of the bill on renewable energies, which gives the last word to the mayors in the definition of zones of accelerated establishment.
The deputies adopted by 58 votes against 27 article 3 of the bill, in order to simplify procedures and promote the deployment of renewable energy production projects (EnR).
It also provides for planning measures: the municipalities will be able to bring up – in a bottom-up planning system – the areas where renewable energy projects can be accelerated, in particular via tax incentives. For the application phase of these priority or favorable zones, assent from the mayor will be required.
The right-wing Senate had reached this compromise with the government. The Assembly on Thursday simplified the procedures, taking into account proposals from the various benches of the Assembly.
For places outside these priority areas, the LR deputies failed to obtain a right of veto from the mayors on this or that project.
The LFI deputies and environmentalists have risen to the fore to denounce the assent of the mayors which will be necessary at the end of the race to set up the acceleration zones in which the renewable energy projects will be encouraged, in particular from a point of view tax view.
These parliamentarians are not opposed to the central role of mayors when proposing zones, but they would have liked the prefectural authorities to be able to decide at the end of the process in the event of disagreement.
You are reintroducing the municipalities’ right of veto over the acceleration zones, with the possibility that the process will not succeed, lamented the rebellious Clémence Guett.
We are beginning to wonder if this law is really a law of acceleration of Enr or a law of slowing down, added his colleague LFI Aurlie Trouv.
Conversely, the Minister for Energy Transition Agns Pannier-Runacher defended the principle that mayors take the process to the end and said she was convinced that a large majority would adhere to the process.
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The macronists, however, were divided, some being in favor of a recall rope from the prefects – they did not win their case.
On Wednesday, amendments aimed at making impossible any wind turbine project outside the acceleration zones had been rejected.
The government pleads for a balance with, on the one hand, areas where renewable energies will be favored, with the assent of the mayors, on the other hand, areas excluded from any project, and finally neutral areas, without prohibition or incentive. . The deputies voted on Thursday evening for the mayors to have more leeway in the delimitation of the exclusion zones, and for the agricultural zones to be more easily preserved.
During the night, the Assembly also adopted identical amendments from the Ecologists, the Socialists and the government in order to allow an increase in the tariff for the purchase of electricity produced in the priority zones in the event of weather conditions less favorable than the mean.
This means better distributing projects across the territory, while ground-mounted solar panels are concentrated in the south, and onshore wind power in the north.