France struggles to overcome its resistance to wind farms

At the inauguration of France’s first-ever offshore wind farm last week, president Emmanuel Macron voiced his displeasure that renewable projects could be completed much faster elsewhere in Europe.

“Other countries that are no less respectful than we are of wildlife managed to construct offshore wind farms in five or six years,” Macron said after touring the site off the Atlantic Coast port of Saint-Nazaire, where 80 turbines are finally turning after 11 years taken up mostly by planning and legal wrangles.

As Europe confronts the urgent need to find alternatives to Russian gas, Macron wants to speed up development of wind and solar power and attract more investors into the sector. But he faces an arduous battle to secure passage of the planned legislation as opposition politicians criticise elements of the bill, while developers say more ambitious measures are needed.

Normally reliant on its large fleet of low-carbon nuclear reactors, outages at a record number of plants this year have exposed France as a renewable energy laggard. With six proposed new reactors coming on line by 2035 at the earliest, ramping up other forms of energy production has become inevitable.

“France became aware of the need to not lay everything on nuclear power the day after the Fukushima accident [in Japan in 2011],” said Raphaël Lance, head of energy transition funds at Mirova, a French sustainable investment firm that is part of investment bank Natixis. But he added that there has still been “strong resistance to accelerating renewable energy”.

Macron’s plan aims to end years of fierce pushback against wind farms from a diverse front of antagonists, from environmentalists wary of their potential harm to birds and other animals to rightwing politicians decrying them as blots on the landscape. But getting the law through a fragmented parliament in which Macron’s centrist coalition has lost its majority, forcing it to barter with opponents on the right and left over the bill, will be tough.

“We have real reservations about it,” said Olivier Marleix, head of the conservative Les Républicains’ parliamentary group, criticising what he perceived as a bid to encourage “anarchic” development of installations without first building a consensus over what France’s energy mix should be for the years to come.

“Is it worth disfiguring all of France’s coastline if in the end we need a little bit less wind power?” Marleix added.

The government’s target of developing 50 offshore sites with a total capacity of 40 gigawatts by 2050, which would provide a fifth of France’s forecast power generation, is highly ambitious even if laws to promote swifter planning and development are passed, developers have warned. Meanwhile, a recent edict urging regional officials to approve a backlog of onshore wind projects — amounting to some 5 gigawatts of capacity, according to lobby group France Energie Eolienne — will not solve any potential power shortages this winter or next.

In contrast to the more strategic approach taken by Germany or Denmark, wind power projects were treated on a case-by-case basis, meaning lengthy public debates and numerous authorisations for each project. The bill aims to encourage planning for multiple projects across broader maritime areas, which would allow some pre-approvals to be cleared for several projects at once and for a broader debate between stakeholders such as fishing groups, mayors and regional authorities.

The legislation would also encourage the installation of more photovoltaic panels on the roofs of car parks and roadside areas. Additionally, it would shift some of the public consultation process online and raise the threshold for projects that require a full inquiry.

Even in Macron’s first five-year term, France struggled to keep pace with the push towards less polluting forms of energy, although its nuclear fleet, which often exports spare power capacity to neighbours, has kept its carbon footprint low compared with other countries.

France was the only EU country to miss a Brussels-approved goal to increase gross energy consumption to 23 per cent from renewable sources in 2020, falling short at 19.1 per cent. That figure has nudged up to 19.3 per cent this year, according to France’s energy ministry.

“There’s been virtually nothing happening over the past five years,” said Anna Creti, a professor in climate economics at Paris Dauphine University. “Even countries that have fewer means than France have invested more.”

At an offshore wind farm under construction off Saint-Brieuc on the northern coast of Brittany, Spanish developer Iberdrola says the lengthy planning procedures added excessive complexity to the €2.4bn project.

Since the 2012 tender, the project has had to switch turbine suppliers after the first contractor ran into financial trouble. Then the UK’s 2016 vote to leave the EU hardened opposition from Breton fishing groups as France and Britain argued over fishing rights, said Emmanuel Rollin, Iberdrola’s country head of renewables.

“Time is not your friend,” Rollin said. “When it goes on for too long, companies go through changes, society evolves.”

The Saint-Brieuc site became an emblem for opposition to renewables. A suspected leak from a drilling ship last year increased fears over pollution, while far-right politician Marine Le Pen pledged her support to fishing communities during this year’s presidential election campaign.

Iberdrola has said it is building the turbines in the least intrusive way possible, installing “jacket foundations” or multiple anchors that allow fish to swim through them. The group has carried out multiple studies on the effects of the turbines, including on the stress levels of scallops, a Breton speciality.

Lance said Mirova had begun to put more money into projects elsewhere in Europe in recent years, but removing some of the obstacles to development could woo investors back to French renewables.

“Anything that contributes to an acceleration is a good thing,” Lance said. “We need to go further, we’re facing a climate emergency.”