France intends to accelerate on the production of electricity from solar and wind sources, so far late, in its next draft law on energy and climate, indicates a government working document made public on Wednesday.
The 62-page text, entitled Ecological Planning in Energy, was produced by the General Secretariat for Ecological Planning (SGPE), which depends on Matignon, and was revealed by Le Monde.
Before the text of the law, the broad outlines of which the government is due to present at the beginning of July, the SGPE compares the planned reduction in France’s greenhouse gas emissions, the country’s energy needs, the planned energy consumption of by 2030, and the means to achieve these goals.
In this context, given the gradual exit from fossil fuels and the country’s electrification, it plans to double the annual rate of development of photovoltaic production capacities, to reach a production capacity of 128 to 160 gigawatts in 2050.
This means that solar energy production must grow by 3.7 to 5.5 GW per year, while the current rate is around 2 GW per year, the report says.
The same goes for onshore wind power, whose production should grow to 2.5 GW per year after 2035, compared to 1.2 GW per year currently. In his founding speech on Belfort energy on February 10, 2022, Emmanuel Macron had on the contrary mentioned a spreading over time of the development objectives of this sector so as not to offend the opponents.
Biomass (wood, agricultural materials and waste for biofuels and biogas, etc.) will have its role, but the project proposes priorities for use (human and animal food, carbon sinks, industries without low-carbon alternatives, etc.).
On the new nuclear side, the government is still targeting six EPR2s, with an option for eight more, by 2050. Of the 56 existing ones, between 0 reactors (the objective) and 9 reactors (unfavorable cases) will be closed before their 60 years for safety reasons.
In the equation, the first element remains sobriety: by 2030, the government is counting on a 17% drop in the country’s final energy consumption compared to that of 2021, notably via the drop in fossil fuels, the renovation of buildings, efforts on heating in winter etc…
In terms of green hydrogen, the document underlines the need to develop the production of 10 GW of electrolyzers installed in 2035 against 6.5 GW planned in 2030, but above all to achieve a cost price of approximately 2.5 euros per kg on average for the sector to remain competitive. The current cost of fossil hydrogen is 2.8 euros per kilo.