If the surge in gas and electricity prices weighs heavily on the expenses of communities, the crisis we are going through will at least have made it possible to accelerate the awareness of elected officials on the necessary energy transition. Before the war in Ukraine broke out, many of them had already started the process. Example in Brittany where a plan to develop the production of solar energy on the roofs of high schools was initiated in 2020.
To date, some twenty establishments are already equipped with it or will be in the coming months. A first step that calls for others since the region will announce this Thursday, during the last session of the year of the regional council, that photovoltaic panels will be installed on the majority of the 115 Breton high schools by 2027. project, which amounts to 40 million euros, should make it possible “to cover 30% of the electricity that high school students consume”, according to Loïg Chesnais-Girard, socialist president of the Brittany region.
Signs on ports and airports?
To accelerate on photovoltaics, the region is also considering installing solar panels on other sites it owns, such as ports, airports or certain tertiary sites. A region well known for its sunshine, Brittany has just adopted a roadmap, called Heol Breizh, to “develop a real Breton sector that creates jobs and increases the territory’s energy autonomy. »
The objective is ambitious because Brittany wants to reach an annual production of renewable energies of 45,000 GWh by 2040, i.e. six times more than in 2016. To achieve this objective, solar photovoltaic will have to increase in power and “ multiply by 8.4 its rate of development compared to the decade 2010-2020”. So there is no time to lose.