Renewable energy sector hopes for fully empowered ministry

It would be "really good" if the Prime Minister's statement when he took office, "which puts the ecological debt and the financial debt of the country on the same level", were translated into the government organisation, so that finally there would be a fully-fledged ministry in charge of developing, supporting and implementing France's energy-climate policy", declared the president of the SER, Jules Nyssen.

"The energy transition is not only a climatic necessity, but it is also an economic, industrial and competitiveness issue," he stressed.

The Ministry of Energy Transition had been abolished in the government of Gabriel Attal, and the Energy portfolio attached to that of Industry and therefore to Bercy, which had been deplored by the renewables sector.

The SER also expressed concern about the prospect of a new "contribution on inframarginal rents" (Crim) on production installations or power stations exceeding 260 megawatts, a possibility raised by the resigning Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, during a hearing on Monday before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly.

"We left a proposal for a contribution from the inframarginal rent, very different from that of 2023," said Mr. Le Maire. "I readily acknowledge that we failed in 2023 to recover what we should have recovered from the energy companies."

This "contribution on the inframarginal rents" (Crim) of electricity producers, accused of having unduly enriched themselves thanks to the surge in energy prices following the war in Ukraine, brought in 400 million euros in 2022, 300 million in 2023 and should generate 100 million in revenue in 2024.

The prospect of a reform, which has been under consideration since the spring, worries industrialists in the sector, who see it as a production tax that will weigh on their investment capacity. "It is the very definition of a tax that is bad, a production tax with a narrow base and a high rate, which will distort investment decisions in a sector that needs to invest," laments an energy company.