Mayors will have the last word in defining accelerated settlement zones. The National Assembly voted this Thursday a key article of the bill on renewable energies. The deputies adopted by 58 votes against 27 the article 3 of the bill, in order to simplify the procedures and to support the deployment of the projects of production of renewable energies (EnR).
It also provides for “planning” measures: the municipalities will be able to bring up – in a “bottom-up” planning system – the areas where to accelerate renewable energy projects, in particular via tax incentives. For the phase of application of these “priority” or “favourable” zones, assent from the mayor will be required. The right-wing-dominated Senate had reached this compromise with the government. The Assembly on Thursday simplified the procedures, taking into account proposals from the various benches of the Assembly.
The risk that the “process will not succeed”
For places outside these priority areas, the LR deputies failed to obtain a “right of veto” from the mayors on this or that project. The LFI deputies and environmentalists have stepped up to the plate to denounce the “conform opinion” of the mayors which will be necessary at the end of the race to set up the “acceleration zones” in which renewable energy projects will be encouraged, in particular to from a tax point of view.
These parliamentarians are not opposed to the central role of mayors when proposing zones, but they would have liked the prefectural authorities to be able to decide at the end of the process in the event of disagreement. “You are in fact reintroducing a right of veto for the municipalities on the acceleration zones, with the possibility that the process will not succeed,” lamented the rebellious Clémence Guetté.
A “slowdown law”
“We are beginning to wonder if this law is really a law for accelerating renewables or a law for slowing down”, added his colleague LFI Aurélie Trouvou. Conversely, the Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher defended the principle “that the mayors take the steps to the end” and said she was convinced that “a large majority will adhere to the approach”.
The macronists, however, were divided, some being in favor of “a reminder rope” from the prefects – they did not win their case. On Wednesday, amendments aimed at making impossible any wind turbine project outside the “acceleration zones” had been rejected.
Preserved agricultural areas
The government is pleading for a balance with, on the one hand, areas where renewable energies will be favoured, with the “assent” of mayors, on the other hand, zones excluded from any project, and finally neutral zones, without prohibition. nor incitement. MEPs voted on Thursday evening for mayors to have more leeway in delimiting exclusion zones, and for agricultural areas to be more easily preserved.
During the night, the Assembly also adopted identical amendments from the ecologists, the socialists and the government in order to allow an increase in the tariff for the purchase of electricity produced in the priority zones in the event of weather conditions less favorable than the mean. It is, through this, to better distribute the projects on the territory, while the solar panels on the ground are concentrated in the South, and the onshore wind in the North.