France is facing “an unprecedented energy wall”, according to a commission of inquiry of the National Assembly. The country has accumulated in 30 years “a considerable delay” in its ability to cover its energy needs, especially electricity. These are the conclusions of the majority rapporteur Antoine Armand and his colleague LR, the chairman of the commission Raphaël Schellenberger. They call for a jumpstart and a new 30-year program.
This report presented Thursday is the result of 88 hearings that look like group psychotherapy at the heart of a winter marked by the insufficient production of the nuclear fleet. The commission “aimed at establishing the reasons for the loss of sovereignty and energy independence of France” there puts the trial of what it describes as “slow drift” and “political rambling, often unconscious and inconsistent” since the mid 1990s.
Thirty recommendations
Experts, scientists, business leaders and regulators, senior civil servants, former ministers, and even two French presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, have been on the grill since 2 November. The report, which retains six major past errors, makes 30 recommendations, most largely in support of the nuclear revival announced by the executive, but also in favor of hydroelectricity and the development of heating networks.
“Over the past thirty years, our energy mix has ultimately changed little and its weaknesses have increased,” according to the report. He points to “multiple dependencies on imported fossil fuels [gaz et pétrole] which are becoming scarce and will be exhausted within a few decades”.
Increased vigilance of the nuclear fleet
He also criticizes the “very weak development of the means of controlling demand” consisting in consuming less. The “electricity consumption forecasts requested from RTE”, the company managing the high-voltage network, only cover “the short or medium term, unrelated to the well-known climate objectives, nor with the long time required by the industry. of the energy sector,” the authors also write. They also see it as one of the factors that led to “having underestimated our electricity needs” and having lacked “long-term reflection on our industrial and climatic ambitions”.
They therefore advocate, among their 30 proposals, a “climate energy programming law over 30 years with climate, energy and industrial objectives as well as the related means, which will be subject to close and regular monitoring by Parliament and the expert institutions. They also ask for “increased transparency” and better anticipation on the part of EDF, while the nuclear fleet is weakened by phenomena of corrosion of the piping of certain reactors and must pass the milestone of 50 years of age.