Renewable energies: agreement between deputies and senators, before a final vote

It took four and a half hours for this joint committee to establish this text in the evening. The Assembly must now decide one last time on Tuesday, January 31, while the date of the Senate vote is not yet specified.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne hailed this agreement on Twitter, the result of "transpartisan work".

"I salute the spirit of responsibility. On the way to the final vote!", tweeted the Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

At the Palais Bourbon, the executive still hopes for support from socialist deputies and independents from the small Liot group, as during the adoption at first reading on January 10, to avoid disappointment.

In the joint committee, the fiercest negotiations between deputies and senators focused in particular on the planning of areas for accelerating the deployment of renewable energies, with the approval of the municipalities, and on possible exclusion zones. Another sensitive subject, the supervision of agrivoltaism, combining agriculture and energy production.

The bill attempts to simplify procedures to make up for France's delay in renewables. In the Assembly, it was strongly opposed by deputies LR and RN, criticizing the "nuisances" of onshore wind turbines.

The Senate with a right-wing majority had for its part largely adopted the text at first reading in early November.

A study published on Tuesday estimated that France should not achieve the objectives it had set for the deployment of electric renewable energies over the period 2019-2023.

For onshore wind power, the official target of 24,1 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity set for the end of 2023 "will not be achieved", the country barely reaching 20 GW at the end of September 2022, notes this annual Observ barometer 'ER.

On the photovoltaic side, despite an increased growth rate since 2021 and a "partially confirmed recovery in 2022 (...) the sector is still not on the right trajectory", adds the Observatory which is based, among other things, on on data from Enedis and EDF.