France backtracks on renewables targets, amends draft ‘energy sovereignty’ bill

France’s draft energy sovereignty bill will not include any targets at all, at least for now, the office of French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has confirmed, responding to criticism about the bill’s lack of consideration for renewables and over-emphasis on nuclear.

Read the original French story here. 

The draft bill on “energy sovereignty” attracted controversy since its publication on 8 January for its perceived lack of balance between renewable energies and nuclear power.

But Le Maire, who inherited the energy portfolio as part of a government reshuffle last week, announced on Wednesday that he would backtrack.

Ongoing consultations with the National Council for Ecological Transition (CNTE) and the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) “have shown the value of taking more time” to determine “what should come under the law and what should rather be part of the energy and climate programme, at the regulatory level”, Le Maire’s office said on Wednesday.

Observers have criticised the text for failing to mention France’s renewable energy targets, even going as far as removing existing objectives set out in French legislation in line with the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive.

However, the bill included detailed objectives for the availability of EDF’s fleet of 53 existing nuclear reactors as well as the upcoming reactors due to open at Flamanville later this year.

According to industry sources, these targets are challenging for EDF, as the French power utility could be penalised if its reactors do not meet the requested availability rates. Indeed, reactors need to be shut for safety and maintenance obligations at regular intervals.

In addition, the text replaces the obligation to “reduce” France’s greenhouse gas emissions with an obligation to “aim for a reduction” – a shift in language which has attracted critcism from environmental groups.

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Targets abandoned altogether?

Dismissing the controversy, the government has decided to remove all objectives from the text, at least for now.

“France will obviously have a multiannual energy programme and targets for renewable energy,” Le Maire’s office said in comments seeking to assuage the critics.

Le Maire himself insisted that he wanted to “speed up the deployment of renewable energy” in comments aired on Wednesday evening on French television.

Rather than definitively abandoning energy targets, “we have decided to postpone the inclusion of this programmatic section in the law,” aides close to Le Maire said.

His cabinet did not specify whether this would be done in the energy sovereignty bill or another law. It also did not rule out going down the regulatory route, whose legal status is “inferior to that of a law”, according to environmental lawyer Arnaud Gossement. French law currently requires energy and climate programming to be legislative rather than regulatory.

The timing of the response “depends on the consultations and the timing and legislative process at stake,” the cabinet commented, adding this could still take “a few weeks”.

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Lawmakers concerned

Meanwhile, French Members of Parliament have already expressed “serious concerns”.

“The absence of this section in the text currently under consultation calls into question Parliament’s ability to debate issues that are strategic for our energy sovereignty and our energy transition,” said lawmakers on the Senate’s economic affairs committee.

They are, therefore, calling for the objectives to be “reintegrated” into the current text. Otherwise, the situation would be “unacceptable, as would the proposal to split up and defer this section to another vehicle [text]”.

Meanwhile, doubts remain about the inclusion of renewable energy targets in line with EU rules. So far, France has not notified the European Commission of any such targets under the EU’s recently updated renewable energy directive. Paris has even initiated a debate to revise the burden sharing on renewables among EU member states, saying its current low-carbon electricity mix could be undermined by ever-higher renewable energy targets.

Without energy objectives, the bill’s only remaining purpose would be to validate the agreement reached in mid-November between EDF and the government aimed at regulating the sale price of nuclear electricity to French consumers.

Le Maire and Ecology Minister Christophe Béchu participated this morning at a meeting of the National Council for Ecological Transition (CNTE), which requested “a work schedule for drawing up the energy-climate programme,” according to one participant.

As a first step, only the parts of the bill regulating the sales price of nuclear electricity and hydropower plants will be presented to the Parliament’s approval, it emerged from the meeting, the source said.

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[Edited by Frédéric Simon/Nathalie Weatherald]

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