(Clean Energy Wire) Dispatch from France, October 2023

France has just unveiled a new strategy for climate action with a view to slashing its carbon emissions by 55 percent compared to i990 levels by the end of this decade. The government intends to leverage energy efficiency measures and the reduction of energy consumption. It also seeks to strengthen its nuclear industry by bringing new plants online following a series of unforeseen shutdowns in 2022 amid skyrocketing energy prices and energy security woes due to droughts and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The deployment of more renewables is the final pillar of France’s decarbonisation plan, although it continnes to lag behind the European targets.

Stories to watch in the weeks ahead

The French government is currently in talks with the European Commission to make up for missing its 2020 target for a 23, percent share of renewables in its power mix. It announced last November that it may buy the missing megawatts from Italy or Sweden through statistical transfer agreements, a mechanism allowing an amount of clean energy sources to be shifted from one country’s books to another's. However, France hasn't taken any steps so far.

French energy transition minister Agnés Pannier-Runacher said that she would introduce two new energy-related laws by the end of this year, one dedicated to nuclear safety and another aimed at regaining control over high power prices and adapting energy output to the nation’s green goals, including a 55 percent reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. On the renewable energy front, the government could soon assess the efficacy of its renewable energy law, adopted in March 2023, ina bid to speed up the deployment of clean energy sources in the country.

In autumn 2023, France is expected to adopt a package of green measures and tax credits that are part of its green industry bill. This includes a “Say on Climate” amendment adopted in July by the French national assembly that will require all listed companies to consult their shareholders on their climate strategies via “Say on Climate” resolutions. If agreed by both the lower and the upper houses, France would be the first country in the world to do so.

France is seeking to replace by year-end the current ARENH (Regulated Access to Incumbent Nuclear Electricity) regulation, which compels state-owned utility EDF to sell 100 TWh of electricity per year of its nuclear production to rivals at 42 euros per MWh. As ARENH is due to expire at the end of 2025; industry leaders have called for the French government to extend the current framework — so far in vain.

Following violent demonstrations over megabasins earlier this year, the French government decided to shut down Les Soulèvements de la Terre, an umbrella group of several environmental activist associations. Its dissolution was, however, suspended in August 2023 and the final decision should take place in the coming months.

Swedish climate activist Ia Aanstoot has recently launched the “Dear Greenpeace campaign”, hoping to make the environmental organisation drop its historical anti-nuclear stance at a time when a rising number of countries in the 27-member bloc are relying on nuclear plants to reduce their carbon emissions from energy production. If the legal action were to succeed, it could boost citizen approval of France's plans to build new nuclear reactors.

The latest from France – last month in recap

The French government unveiled in September based on energy efficiency measures, sufficiency — the deliberate reduction of power consumption, and the development of renewables and nuclear. As announced by President Emmanuel Macron, it will also present biodiversity and adaptation strategies later this year.

With France lagging behing EU peers in terms of renewable energy deployment, sector experts have pointed to the need to lower regulatory barriers and unblock authorisations for renewable projects in order to further develop solar and wind power as well as meet its 55 percent target for emissions reduction by 2030.

In Angust, the French government announced that it would authorise its remaining two operational coal-fired plants — with a combined capacity of 1.8 GW — to operate until the end of 2024 for 900 hours more than the 1,300-hour ceiling initially allowed in.a bid to avoid winter blackouts. By 2027, it plans to convert them to biomass.

French Energy Minister Agnés Pannier-Runacher said in late August that the government may reform the power market on a national level if the EU negotiations stalled, starting with the long- debated use of two-way contracts for difference (CFDs) to support new nuclear and renewable energy. Disagreements between France and Germany on state aid for power producers have kept EU member states from agreeing on the planned power market overhaul.

Highlights from upcoming events and top reads

Euractiv energy and climate journalist Paul Messad looked into “energy sufficiency,” a French political concept, which the government has made one of the pillars of its decarbonisation plan alongside the deployment of nuclear power and renewable energies: Energy sufficiency, the French political concept still being misunderstood in Europe.

Damian Gayle, environment correspondent for The Guardian, found that French climate activists were more “radical” than protesters in neighbouring countries, with interviewees citing “a living tradition of popular struggle,” which could explain why France is taking things further. The article questions whether this model will spread and the police’s response evolve: Fire and concrete: Will France’s model of radical climate protest catch on?

If you haven't read last year’s best-selling book in France yet, the graphic novel “Le Monde sans Fin” by illustrator Christophe Blain and Jean-Mare Jancovici, an energy and climate specialist presiding think tank The Shift Project, now is the time to do so. The authors spur readers to observe the deep changes that the planet is currently experiencing and the consequences implied, whether they are related to the economy, the ecology or the society.