Renewables: Bill enters Assembly, majority considers left

The debate will resume on Monday in the National Assembly. This time the deputies will consider the draft law on renewable energy sources. And the relative majority will need allies to get through this text. Relying on the right in previous proposals, it is the left that is on the macronists’ radar this time around to help them move forward on this news-fuelled issue.

During the committee’s deliberations, “we considered proposals from deputies, in particular from the left and from LIOT (Liberté, Indépendants, Outre-mer et Territoires),” Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runachet said in a Sunday newspaper. . “All conditions are met for them to vote for this text,” she pleaded. “I trust the national representation and see that there is a fairly broad consensus in the Senate. So I’m sure,” Emmanuel Macron, for his part, assured in our columns this Saturday.

The right wants to return the veto power of mayors

It will still be necessary to overcome the resistance of the right. But in the Assembly, the deputies of the Republic of Lithuania intend to reintroduce measures that the Senate partially abandoned: the right of veto for mayors on new projects, as well as a ban on windmills at sea less than 40 km from the coast. The RN also wants to challenge the text, as opposed to wind turbines, “intermittent energies that make us dependent on the weather in addition to dependence on other countries,” MP Pierre Meurin accuses.

On the left, the rebels lament that they are “far from the text of environmental planning and popular ecology that the country needs.” The Socialists have already expressed their “rather benevolent” opinion, and environmentalists should not vote against it, even if they argue that the bill is “still largely insufficient.”

As a token of the promise, Agnès Pannier-Runachet will join them in their quest to use “to the maximum extent possible already artificial territories for the installation of renewable energy sources: rooftops, car parks, along railway and river routes …” “And we are working to introduce, instead of an intermediary, renewable energy sources proposed by environmentalists,” the minister further argued.

2020 target not yet met

On the NGO side, WWF calls for “going beyond party positions” in order to “find an agreement.” The wind energy sector, for its part, urged MPs on Saturday to “substantially” change the text to “enable France to meet its own energy needs.”

Often technical, this bill deals with a number of issues, including agrovoltaism, i.e. the installation of solar panels on agricultural land, with a balance to be found between energy and food sovereignty. It also provides for temporary measures to simplify administrative procedures and thus speed up solar park projects.

The bill is meant to make up for France’s delay in terms of renewable energy (EnR). Solar and wind currently account for only 19.3% of gross final energy consumption, already below the 2020 target of 23%, and France remains too dependent on imported fossil energy sources. The head of state set targets for 2050: a tenfold increase in solar power generation capacity to more than 100 gigawatts (GW) and the deployment of 50 offshore wind farms up to 40 GW.