En seeking to relaunch nuclear power whatever the cost, France is not only missing a historic opportunity for a rapid and less costly transition to renewable energies and decarbonization. It weakens the climate ambition of the European Union (EU).
The reintegration of current nuclear production in Europe – 6% of its final energy – into the objective of 42.5% renewable energies set by the RED III directive [Renewable Energy Directive III] would create an accounting artifice and lead to strategic vagueness in an area which nevertheless needs a long-term vision.
The French government is leading a crusade to rehabilitate nuclear power: according to it, it is the only carbon-free energy “pilotable”, a characteristic that he considers essential for managing electrical networks. This while omitting that decarbonization can be obtained, as the majority of EU countries envisage, by the combination of several renewable energies and means of flexibility and storage. He calls for the EU to assign low-carbon energy targets to member countries, and not renewable energy targets as it has done until now.
Strong manner, without transparency
Whatever one thinks of nuclear power, the case seems plausible. And the French government even achieved an initial success, limited to the production of hydrogen, which it loudly welcomed. He would now like to see this success generalized to all energy vectors. However, the method it uses to achieve its goals risks seriously upsetting our partners, harming French players in the renewable and storage sectors, and weakening the fight against climate change.
The government is not opening a questioning for the future, it is doing it in the heat of the moment, in the middle of the ford, and in a strong and non-transparent manner. To believe that nuclear power is worth further weakening the European consensus, which the President of the Republic nevertheless claims constitutes its DNA.
First of all, it refuses to regularize the situation of France, the only member country to still have not reached its objective of 23% renewable energies for 2020 (and the following years), by purchasing from other countries members the necessary “statistical transfers” – that is to say their renewable energy quotas. He thus turns his back on the commitments made by France in December 2009 by President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Prime Minister François Fillon.
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