The debates will resume on Monday in the National Assembly. This time, MPs will be looking at the Renewable Energy Bill. And the relative majority will need allies to pass this text. After relying on the right for previous proposals, it is the left which is this time in the sights of the macronists to help them move forward on this subject, made hot by the news.
During the examination in committee, “we took up proposals from deputies, in particular from the left and from LIOT (Liberté, Indépendants, Outre-mer et Territoires)”, argued the Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. in the Sunday newspaper. “All the conditions are met for them to vote for this text,” she pleaded. “I have confidence in the national representation and I see that a fairly broad agreement has been found in the Senate. So, I am confident, ”assured, for his part, Emmanuel Macron in our columns this Saturday.
The right wants to reintroduce the veto of mayors
It will still be necessary to overcome the resistance of the right. But in the Assembly, the LR deputies intend to reintroduce measures which the Senate has partly renounced: a right of veto for mayors on new projects, as well as the prohibition of wind turbines at sea less than 40 km from the coast. The RN also wants to challenge the text, as opposed to wind turbines, “intermittent energies which make us dependent on the weather in addition to being dependent on other countries”, accuses MP Pierre Meurin.
On the left, the rebels deplore being “far from the text of ecological planning and popular ecology that the country needs”. The Socialists have already expressed their “rather benevolent” view and the environmentalists should not vote against, even if they affirm that the bill “is still largely insufficient”.
As a sign of pledge, Agnès Pannier-Runacher ensures to join them in their desire to use “as much as possible the already artificialized areas to install renewable energies: roofs, car parks, along the rail and river tracks…” “And we are working on the implementation in place of a mediator of renewable energies, proposed by the ecologists”, further argued the minister.
2020 target still not reached
On the NGO side, WWF calls for “going beyond partisan postures” to “find an agreement”. The wind power sector, for its part, urged the deputies on Saturday to “significantly” amend the text to “allow France to meet its own energy needs”.
Often technical, this bill addresses a battery of subjects including agrivoltaism, that is to say 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 aims to make up for France’s delay in terms of renewable energies (EnR). For the time being, solar and wind represent only 19.3% of gross final energy consumption, already below the target set for 2020 of 23%, and France is still too dependent on energy imported fossils. The Head of State has set the challenges, by 2050: the tenfold increase in solar energy production capacity to exceed 100 gigawatts (GW) and the deployment of 50 offshore wind farms to reach 40 GW .