It was February 10, 2022 in Belfort, in the industrial setting of the General Electric factory in Belfort. Emmanuel Macron, then a candidate for re-election, defined objectives for French energy policy for 2050 and announced the relaunch of civil nuclear power, with the project for six new EPR2 reactors. “A broad public consultation will take place in the second half of 2022 on energy, then parliamentary discussions will be held in 2023 to revise the multi-annual energy programming,” he said. The consultation will start almost two years late. Parliamentary discussions, on the other hand, will not take place. The sea serpent of a great energy law plunged into deep water. The government intends to rule by decree.
After much delay, the cabinet of Roland Lescure, the Minister for Industry and Energy, confirmed it three weeks ago. The country’s energy roadmap 2025-2035 should see the light of day at the end of the year, after a public consultation carried out under the aegis of the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP), an independent administrative authority which, in our region , organized consultation on the wind farm projects off the island of Oléron (Charente-Maritime) and a giant photovoltaic park in Saucats (Gironde). During its meeting on May 2, the CNDP designated its “guarantors” for this debate on the multi-year energy programming (PPE) and on the third national low-carbon strategy which will accompany it.
“Calendar drifts”
Behind these terms, as off-putting as they are jargony, hide very concrete questions. What place should each energy Source play in the future? How much power to install for solar, onshore wind, offshore wind? What timetable for nuclear power? What path can we take to reduce fossil fuels – coal, gas, oil – which are torpedoing the climate? For the sectors concerned, it is more than urgent to rule. In a very unusual step, Corinne Le Quéré, the president of the High Council for the Climate – an expert body created by the State in 2019 – sent a letter to this effect a month ago to Gabriel Attal. The Franco-Canadian climatologist alerted him to the delays in all the programming documents on energy and climate. They “are essential in order to guide climate action in the long term”, she recalled, pointing out “the calendar drifts”.
If Roland Lescure responded in his own way, he took obvious liberties with the law. That of November 2019, called “climate energy”. It provides that every five years, “a law determines the objectives and sets the action priorities of the national energy policy to respond to the ecological and climatic emergency”. By relying on the role assigned to Parliament, the government avoids a complicated debate and a significant risk of not finding a majority. In doing so, he attracts the wrath of deputies and senators who work on the issue.
Daniel Grémillet is one of them. Vice-president (LR) of the Senate Economic Affairs Committee, president of the study group on energy, he criticizes the decision of the executive and recalls that it has not shown great consistency on energy issues in the recent past. “Before Emmanuel Macron’s Belfort speech which relaunched nuclear power, we were aiming to close fourteen reactors! It is not possible to do without a parliamentary debate which sets the course,” he judges.
“The Élysée decides on its own”
Unusually, this point of view, which emanates from the right of the political spectrum, is joined by environmental NGOs. “Five years after a law that it itself put in place, the government has decided that Parliament has no say in France’s major energy and climate choices. It’s the Élysée which decides on its own in its own corner,” notes Nicolas Nace, the energy transition campaign manager for Greenpeace France.
According to the NGO, the breach of the 2019 law will weaken the energy roadmap. She could be the target of legal action. “And what one government decides by decree, another government can undo by decree. Or not respect it, without any consequences,” adds Nicolas Nace.
This climate of discord could affect the public consultation that the CNDP will establish. The State “will not be required to follow” the resulting recommendations, explains the Commission. It’s simpler that way…
