Adopted by 320 votes to 5, the text must allow France to catch up by lightening administrative procedures, accelerating the development of solar and wind at sea and promoting the adhesion to projects at the level Local.
Le Monde with AFP
The majority of the right -wing Senate adopted at first reading on the night of Friday 4 to Saturday 5 November a bill to accelerate renewable energies (ENR). Carried by the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the text must now be adopted in the National Assembly, where it will be debated on December 5.
The vote on this bill widely enriched by the senators was acquired by 320 votes “for” and 5 “against” (4 LR and a centrist). The CRCE group with a communist majority abstained.
In the midst of an energy crisis, this bill aims to make France catch its great delay on renewable energies. It is articulated in large components: reduction of administrative procedures to reduce the deployment time of projects; acceleration of the development of solar energy and wind at sea; Improved local acceptability of projects.
The Bill ENR is the first part of a triptych supplemented by a bill aimed at facilitating the construction of six new nuclear reactors, presented Wednesday in the Council of Ministers. Then, in the second half of 2023, by the next programming law on energy and climate. “We do not have the luxury of waiting to get out of fossil fuels. The French are watching us,” said the Minister of Energy Transition.
Two blocking points introduced in committee on the initiative of the rapporteur LR Didier Mandelli were lifted in the hemicycle, at the cost of long negotiations. The Senate has renounced a right of “veto” of mayors on the establishment of renewable energies, in favor of a more global device based on the choice by the municipalities of “priority zones”. “The mayor will therefore be able to oppose the establishment of wind turbines if he does not wish to on his territory,” said the LR group. This fairly complex device should be “smoothed” in the rest of the shuttle.
The Senate has also given up the distance of 40 km from the coasts for wind turbines at sea, which, according to Agnès Pannier-Runacher, would have “very significantly” reduces the development potential of these projects.
The PS group “delighted that the main political orientations of the senatorial right were broken up during the debate in public session”. Ecologists have congratulated themselves on the abolition of the right of veto of mayors “and” major advances “obtained on photovoltaic installations.
“The Senate may claim to have embedded local elected officials” in the development of renewable energies, said the president of the Economic Affairs Committee, Sophie Prima (LR).
The objective set by President Emmanuel Macron for 2050 is to multiply by ten the production capacity of solar energy to exceed 100 GW and deploy 50 wind farms at sea to reach 40 GW.
“It is imperative that the deputies are mobilizing to strengthen this text, too weak, in particular on terrestrial wind turbines, in compliance with residents and biodiversity”, reacted to the France-Presse Nicolas agency Nace de Greenpeace France.