On weekday January twenty seventh, the International Energy Agency (IEA) discharged a long-awaited report known as “Conditions and needs for the technical feasibleness of an influence system with a high share of renewables in France towards 2050”. Yet, that document was given a cold welcome by the French nuclear business, as behind this somewhat advanced title hides a key message : a situation of one hundred pc renewable energy is “technically possible” in 2060 in France. this suggests that the country would doubtless not would really like energy to satisfy its domestic demand.
The nuclear sector accounts for around seventieth of today’s French electricity combine, and over four-hundredth of ultimate energy demand. Back within the 1970’s, France set to need the nuclear path, meaning to move faraway from oil and achieving energy independence. Since then, not solely did the country guarantee its own security of electricity provide, however it'd additionally export it towards neighboring EU countries. Killing 2 birds with one stone, France boasted variety of the foremost cost effective electricity in Europe ANd was proud to possess an nearly fossil fuels free electricity generation system.
In 2020, the priority has shifted from nuclear power towards obliging with the Paris-agreement goal of being net-zero carbon by 2050. In its pluriannual set up of energy, France gave itself the target to cut back the share of atomic power within the energy combine to five hundredth by 2035. In 2020, the govt. declared the longer term closure of fourteen nuclear plants to satisfy this objective. The closure of the Fessenheim plant, in June 2020 left a 1 ,7 GW capability gap to be purchased with different sources of power generation.
In parallel, the very fact that the French utility EDF is more and more losing its power within the nuclear field is consensually admitted. The difficulties EDF is facing with the event of the Flamanville plant - i.e. the misconstructed weldings and excesses in budget - offer a salient illustration of this trend.
The temporal order of the IEA report isn't innocuous. In fact, the nuclear business is presently witnessing a polar moment, because the French Nuclear Regulator (ASN) recently greenlighted the extension of nuclear plants’ lifespan over forty years. this suggests that some previous reactors are decommissioned however can need to get replaced by new ones. The French government faces a complicated question: on the one hand, it'd like better to add further nuclear capability, or on the other , it'd invest in renewable energy to catch up on the losses of nuclear capability.
The IEA report was charged with exploring that specific perplexity. The report was commissioned by the French transmission Operator RTE, and meant to guide the Minister of Ecology - Barbara Pompili – in drafting the end of the day energy policy. Barbara Pompili, UN agency represents the French party, and has ne'er hidden her opposition to energy, welcome this report with enthusiasm : « the choice of 100 percent renewables has ne'er been explored in such depth: the best authority for energy admits it's technically attainable », she declared to autoimmune disease Monde.
The IEA doesn't enter detail concerning the feasibleness of the renewable energy possibility. Yet, it's placed on the table, and this will be already enough for anti-nuclear environmental teams like NGO or Réseau Sortir du Nucléaire to mention success, and to undertake and do away with decades of being known as “utopists”.
However, Pompili’s stance is much from being coherent with the previous moves of the Ministry of setting, and even less with French president Emmanuel Macron’s speeches. Back in 2019, former Minister of setting Elisabeth Borne requested EDF to draft a roadmap for the event of six new European controlled Reactors (EPR). This call angry a surprise among the entire political spectrum, as building half dozen new reactors in fifteen years appeared impossible given the EDF’s struggle to create only 1 such plant at Flamanville.
On his half, the French president declared that “nuclear power must stay a pillar in our national electricity mix”, showing little or no interest to totally pivot to renewables. Pompili has assured that no judgment are issued before the tip of the mandate, in 2022.
The report shows that in each eventualities, the “share of renewables would well increase”. However, the 100 percent renewables situation would require either painful sacrifices or large investments, the IEA has listed four challenges which is able to ought to be overcome for its implementation. the primary one is rising grid stability (1), meaning the adequacy between provide and demand. Doing this while not typical energy sources seems tough, particularly considering the intermittent (or variable) character of renewables (2) To address this unregularity, the IEA envisages many solutions like demand-side flexibility, improvement of batteries, and management of peaking units.
Then comes the mandatory increase of operational reserves (3) and grid development (4), wherever the authors of the report write: “for the present, France doesn't ought to procure giant volumes of operational reserves compared to different countries, and its equalization system is competitive, resulting in low prices for the patron compared to different European countries”.
Whether France can manage to stay energy bills at acceptable levels for customers is unsure, and prices for the end-user might find yourself rising as a results of a nuclear phase-out. Next to the present , the number of investment created into the improved grid balanced systems isn't clearly mentioned : the authors of the report just say that “assessing the prices is on the far side the scope of this report (...) though they'll be substantial”.
Lastly, only 1 paragraph is devoted to the problem of social acceptance and to the prices tacit by these reforms, as if they weren't essential for the government’s call. Despite all the unknowns, one factor becomes clear from this report: if the one hundred pc renewables situation eventually takes form, it'll mark a definitive shift of the energy sector far from market logics.
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