French President Emmanuel Macron will present a bill on accelerating renewables at the Saint-Nazaire offshore wind farm on Thursday (22 September), but critics have noted it is somewhat short on ambition.

Read the original French article here.

Renewables were targeted to account for 23% of France’s energy mix by 2020, but as it accounts for just 19.1%, the government has made the doubling of renewables one of its flagship projects.

Among the proposed reforms, the government wants to simplify the procedure for granting permits to new projects as it takes “an average of five years of procedures to build a solar farm […], seven years for a wind farm and ten years for an offshore wind farm,” while other EU countries are often twice as fast.

The bill is based mainly on Commission recommendations made in May. One of them even criticised France for its “restrictive regulation and high administrative and permitting barriers.”

Temporary measures

The bill also proposes temporary three-year measures on renewable or low-carbon electricity, gas or hydrogen production, storage, public transmission or distribution networks and associated equipment, and the replacement of these installations to reduce their carbon footprint.

One of the bill’s proposals is to align public participation with opinions from the investigative committees for renewable energy projects.

However, without safeguards, this could weaken the opinions of the public and the bodies competent to look into such projects, according to an opinion on the bill issued by the country’s ecological transition committee, CNTE.

The bill also proposes to unify the different public consultations, further digitalise public participation for projects subject to prior declaration, and facilitate the compatibility of urban planning documents; However, the CNTE regrets “the absence of provisions relating to the involvement of citizens and communities in new projects”.

Raising environmental assessment thresholds

The bill also proposes allowing for an easier increase in environmental assessment thresholds to better align with EU rules and procedures.

The proposal has already been criticised by the CNTE, which warns that France should not fall into the trap of making its laws less restrictive just for the sake of aligning with EU rules. CNTE is thus urging the government to refer the matter to the National Biodiversity Committee and the National Council for Nature Conservation.

The proposed measure has also been criticised by Green lawmaker Charles Fournier, who told EURACTIV France that the government is running the risk of sending a positive signal to the rest of the industry.

More generally, the lawmaker and CNTE bemoaned the bill for its lack of measures to protect biodiversity.

.Tdeployinghe bill also proposes to empower the government to simplify connection measures and ‘create continuity in action, which is somewhat in line with the Commission’s recommendation to have member states put in place “long-term network planning” for connection.

Little on wind and solar

However, the growing solar and wind industry is not so prominent in the bill.

For example, it lacks a strict and binding definition of agrivoltaics and a definition of zones likely to develop, the CNTE noted.

On offshore wind power, CNTE calls for the bill to consider economic, social and environmental issues, while Fournier points to greater involvement of local actors and citizens.

Fournier favours giving more competence to the regions and inter-municipalities, particularly as a law adopted in February this year gave mayors who oppose renewable energy projects the right to refuse them without any justification.

Unclear ambitions 

“This is neither an emergency response text nor a planning text. The timetable is not clear, and it is, therefore, difficult to read its ambitions,” said Tourier, who added his party would offer a helping hand to the government if it accepts their proposals.

According to CNTE, the bill also lacks coherence, and the timing of some measures reinforces “the risk of instability and legal insecurity”.

According to the committee, the bill also misses measures to train staff so they can speed up procedures – an issue Fournier says leads to situations in which some ready-to-use projects are not implemented.

Generally speaking, the CNTE did still give the bill its general go-ahead but called on the government to clarify its “global strategy” so that it can reach the EU renewable energy target for 2030, which the European Parliament recently set to 45%. However, this may be changed during upcoming discussions between the Commission, the Council and Parliament.

Source: Euractiv.com