“Your strategy is an all-nuclear strategy… It is not possible,” Emmanuel Macron told Marine Le Pen on Wednesday evening. Of the three hours of the debate, around twenty minutes were devoted to ecology. Finally, and above all, to our future electric mix. In short: what sources of electricity production should be used to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050?
On this subject, Emmanuel Macron sees in it one of the illustrations of the lack of coherence of the Marine Le Pen’s ecological program, to the point of qualifying it as “uplifting”.
The revival of nuclear power as a common point
The two candidates still agree on one point on the “energy” file: the need to relaunch the nuclear industry by building new EPRs on the territory. The outgoing president detailed his vision during a trip to Belfort on February 10, expressing his desire to “extend [la durée de vie de] all the reactors that can be, beyond 50 years if possible”. Above all, he had announced the objective of building six EPR2 type nuclear reactors by 2050, the first of which is expected for 2035, and considered eight additional ones.
Marine Le Pen goes even further. In his “Marie Curie” plan, it pleads for the reopening of the Fessenheim plant (Haut-Rhin), closed in the summer of 2020, and promises the construction of five pairs of EPRs for commissioning in 2031, and five pairs of EPR2 for 2036. And next to ? The candidate of the Rassemblement National clearly mentions her intention to develop renewable energies (ENR), but only cites hydroelectricity and the geothermal energy. On wind and solar, it is for a moratorium, and even wants the gradual dismantling of wind turbines already installed, starting with those that are reaching the end of their life.
“No exit strategy from fossil fuels that goes through all nuclear”
By choosing this path, “Marine Le Pen would cut itself off from the two most mature renewable energies with the greatest potential for development,” says Nicolas Goldberg, head of the energy division of the think tank Terra Nova. As for the hydraulics [qui assure déjà environ 11 % de production énergétique], we can consider the deposits almost saturated in France. It will not be possible to build many more dams. »
Emmanuel Macron, he does not intend to choose. He not only wants to relaunch nuclear power but also massively develop renewable energy. With a focus on offshore wind and solar. He wants fifty wind farms to be set up at sea by 2050 and wants to multiply our installed solar power by ten, to exceed 10 gigawatts by 2030. We therefore find the famous “at the same time”, expression which is now associated with him as he has used it since the 2017 campaign.
“There is no exit strategy from fossil fuels that goes through all nuclear,” he justifies, ensuring that all independent experts say so. “Electrical systems powered mainly by renewable energies are becoming more and more viable”, noted in any case the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest report on April 4. Since 2010, “the costs of solar energy, wind energy and batteries have steadily decreased, sometimes by up to 85%”, he also pointed out.
The imperative to increase electricity production capacity
From there to say that an “all nuclear” strategy as Marine Le Pen conceives it, is impossible? Xavier Moreno refers to the very particular character of the French energy mix. “For thirty years, the atom ensured 80% of our electricity production, and it worked well”, recalls the president and founder of the Cérémé, a study circle “for another approach to France’s energy strategy”, ultimately close to that proposed by Marine Le Pen. The scenario imagined by the Cérémé is based on a mix composed, by 2050, of 80% nuclear electricity (compared to approximately 70% today) supplemented by hydraulic and solar energy. “Diffused (roofs, parking shades) only, that is to say without photovoltaic power plant on the ground”, specifies Xavier Moreno. As for wind power, on land or at sea, its development has come to a standstill.
“It is not a question of thinking of the electrical system of the future as that of the past, considers for his part Maxence Cordiez, engineer in the energy sector and author ofEnergies, Fake or not? (Tana editions). There is still an issue that we keep talking about, which is the decarbonization of the economy. Which will require, in part, to electrify uses *. Like Nicolas Goldberg, he refers to the study Energy futures delivered by RTE, the operator of the French electricity network, last fall. “It provides for an increase in electricity consumption by 2050, continues Maxence Cordiez. But it will also be necessary, over this period, to renew most of the French nuclear fleet or to close the last coal-fired power stations and our few gas-fired power stations…” In other words, to bring new electricity production capacities into service as quickly as possible. , and what’s more low carbon, which limits the options.
Keep all the cards in hand?
By keeping only nuclear power as an almost exclusive option, Emmanuel Macron then criticizes Marine Le Pen for freeing herself from “industrial time”. “It announces ten new reactors in 2031, when EDF itself says that it is not able to return the first reactors that could be ordered from it before 2035”, recalls Nicolas Goldberg. Not before thirteen, therefore, in the best of cases. “But it doesn’t just get stuck on deadlines,” adds the head of Terra Nova’s energy division. There is also the question of logistics chains, ie the sector’s ability to bring out all the components of a reactor at a sustained rate with the required level of safety. EDF itself considers that it will not be able to make more than fourteen reactors by 2050.
Xavier Moreno does have a solution to deal with the expected increase in consumption while waiting for the arrival of new EPRs that the Cérémé is imagining from 2035. multiannual energy programto close fourteen reactors [douze désormais si on enlève les deux de Fessenheim], he says. All this because they are over 50 years old, when we could very well extend them to 60 or even 70 years old. The president of Cérémé regrets that Marine Le Pen did not question Emmanuel Macron on this subject. “Emmanuel Macron has returned to this plan of closures in Belfort”, indicates Maxence Cordiez, who invites us not to get the wrong debate. “The urgency is to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels as much as possible and as quickly as possible. To deprive oneself of one of the solutions (whether wind or nuclear) to achieve this is completely out of step. Such a scenario can possibly fit on paper, but it requires such efforts from the other sectors that the probability of failure increases…”