Local elected officials on the front line to deploy renewable energies

Where to set up? How to better distribute the sites, today concentrated in the North and the East? How to foster local membership?

The new law will ask elected officials to define "acceleration zones" for the establishment of renewable energy (EnR) infrastructure.

"We are betting on putting communities back in the driver's seat," Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told AFP.

"For the first time, we are creating a planning system that puts local elected officials at the center of the game, bringing them together to deal concretely with the subject of the installation of EnR projects in their territories so that they are better accepted and that they own them," she continued.

"On the other hand, if communities do not offer acceleration zones, they will not be able to impose exclusion zones".

Clearly: local elected officials will have an interest in saying where they want wind turbines, otherwise the market will prevail.

The State is giving itself six months to provide each department with its data: production, wind or biomass deposits, constraints... The municipalities or inter-municipalities will then have six months to send their proposals.

It will then take a new semester, at best by mid-2024, to see "if these departmental plans stick with" France's objectives in renewables.

“Otherwise, we will ask the mayors to propose alternative territories”, adds the minister, who wrote to the prefects to prepare them and discount “acceleration zones in all the departments”.

For France Énergie Éolienne, the voice of the sector is "a profound change in method, which now places local elected officials as co-responsible for the success of the energy transition and the security of supply" of the country.

Share the profits

Today, for an onshore wind project, the mayor is obligatorily questioned during the public inquiry; the same goes for large photovoltaic fields. However, the prefect is not obliged to take this into account for the authorisation.

However, the profession affirms it: the "Far West" projects, carried out in the 1990s by developers only concerned with convincing landowners, are over.

Even when it comes to private land, "the gateway is the municipality. We never meet the owners without seeing the mayor first", explains Joseph Fonio, President France of RWE Renewables. "In the majority of cases, we are well received".

"Most of our actions aim to ensure that these projects are supported locally: through co-construction, association with investment, financing of initiatives in favor of biodiversity or heritage", he lists, referring to similar practices in Italy or Germany.

But the elected official cannot do everything, “if the population does not want it, what do we do?” asks Nicolas Garnier, general delegate of Amorce, the main association of communities on the subjects of water, energy, waste, relieved that the "right of veto" of the mayors on the projects has for the moment disappeared from the text: "too much pressure" on the elected official.

On the other hand, it must be given the means to encourage membership, in addition to tax revenue, pleads Mr. Garnier.

The defenders of renewables thus regret that the sharing of profits with the residents of the installations (via a reduction in the electricity bill) has disappeared from the text of the law.

Another avenue often mentioned but not retained: the direct sale of renewable energy to municipalities.

"As he is proud to attract a factory and employment, the elected official must be able to fully assume an energy site: it is a godsend and the fight against climate change", underlines Nicolas Garnier.

"Until 1946, the electricity production units were carried by the municipalities: dams, turbines...", he recalls. But since then, "the energy policy has worked so well that it has deconscious" public opinion, he adds, wondering about the need to arrive at more binding objectives.

In Germany, where the Länder have great latitude in energy, some are still reluctant vis-à-vis renewables, such as Bavaria with wind power. Berlin has therefore proposed a law to compel latecomers.