France’s Le Maire slams EU’s ‘no longer wanted’ renewable targets

The EU’s renewable energy targets adopted in March last year are too restrictive and unsatisfactory as climate goals, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, who took over the Energy portfolio in a recent government reshuffle, said on Monday (4 March).

Read the original French article here.

Despite repeated requests from the European Commission, France remains opposed to the calculation method used by Brussels to set targets for the use of renewable energy.

“The targets can no longer be to have so many windmills here, so many photovoltaic panels here,” Le Maire said on Monday, criticising “the Europe we no longer want”.

The calculation method is set out in the Renewable Energy Directive, the third version of which (RED III) was adopted last March, and cites that the EU must collectively reach a 42.5% share of renewable energy in its gross final energy consumption by 2030 – with some states having to aim for at least 45%.

France, for instance, must achieve a renewable share of at least 44%, as efforts have been distributed according to each member state’s capacities.

Except the French government refuses to lay down this target in writing.

No reference to it was made in the energy-climate plan sent to the European Commission last November, in which the government prefers to set a target of 56% ‘decarbonised energy’, or in its energy-climate programme, which set out French climate targets on a multi-year basis and has since been shelved.

France has been warned by the Commission to reconsider its plans, with Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson saying the EU executive was ready to “propose measures at EU level” to remedy the situation – though she provided no further details.

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In Le Maire’s view, it would be better for the EU “to set clear climate targets and say: ‘We want to be carbon-neutral, and then everyone will be able to have the energy mix they choose on a sovereign basis'”.

The issue has been on the table since France refused to buy so-called “statistical megawatts” from other EU countries that had met their targets.

“France will not pay any penalties”, given the fact that its emissions are “among the lowest of all European countries,” Le Maire said.

“We will find a solution with the European Commission,” he added.

One solution could be to replace renewable energy targets with low-carbon targets as part of the EU’s 2040 climate goals.

“We encourage the Commission to develop energy policies for 2040 on the basis of updated scenarios, taking into account the latest announcements on nuclear capacity deployment in the updated National Nuclear Energy Development Plans,” the members of the French-led Nuclear Alliance, now comprising 12 member states, reiterated on Monday. They had already made such a request last December.

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Orders of magnitude

In response to Le Maire’s comments, Anne Bringault, programme director at the Climate Action Network, said that “if France were to renege on its European commitments on targets it has supported, it would send a very dangerous signal that the door is open for member states to renege on their European commitments in other areas”.

Meanwhile, the presidential majority in the French parliament denounced the “percentage policy”, preferring instead the even vaguer policy of “orders of magnitude”, as Antoine Armand, deputy for Renaissance and author of the book “Le mur énergétique français” (“The French energy wall”), said in early February.

The Renewable Energy Union (SER), which defends the interests of the sector, is unwavering in its preference to “stick to the only text that is valid today, i.e. RED III [minimum 42.5%] and what it means for France [more than 44%]”, as its president Jules Nyssen told Euractiv at the end of January.

In his view, the French position in Brussels is all the more incomprehensible given that the French energy and climate strategy, submitted for consultation at the end of September, states that “if we calculate the consumption and production targets by sector, to reach 45% of renewable energy in final energy consumption by 2030”.

“So it’s not impossible,” he said. However, a source close to the dossier when Agnès Pannier-Runacher was energy transition minister (until last January) told Euractiv France that he was “less confident”.

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[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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