Renewable energies: last green light from the Assembly

The deputies adopted the text by 217 votes against 169, with the support of the Socialists and elected representatives of the small independent group Liot, as at first reading.

Ecologists again abstained, criticizing a text "without ambition". Communists, LR and RN voted against.

This vote is a satisfaction for the government, faced the same day with a new day of mobilization against its pension reform.

The bill dedicated to renewable energies (EnR) gave rise to a compromise between deputies and senators a week ago.

It aims to "remove all the obstacles that delay the deployment of projects", underlined the Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. "We are the only European country not to have achieved its objectives" in terms of wind and solar power, she said.

The fiercest negotiations between deputies and senators focused on the planning of acceleration zones where priority should be given to deploying renewable energies, with the assent of the municipalities, as well as possible exclusion zones.

"Local elected officials propose and have the last word on zoning," said Minister Pannier-Runacher. And exclusion zones will only be possible for territories that validate acceleration zones, she recalled.

The left fears the return of the veto of the mayors, which LR demanded for the whole of the territory. And NGOs and players in the renewables sector criticize a "gas plant".

Another sensitive subject is the definition of agrivoltaism, combining agriculture and energy production. The government ensures that the text regulates this practice, in order to avoid abuses at the expense of food sovereignty.

Throughout the debates, the LR deputies, contrary to their fellow senators, as well as the elected RNs, scrapped against the bill, pointing out the "nuisance" of the wind turbines.

This text is only the first part of a triptych on energy. In the spring, the executive intends to defend in the National Assembly the bill promoting the construction of new nuclear reactors, voted in first reading in the Senate on January 24.

Then the Parliament will decide, at best this summer, on the energy future of France, with the multiannual programming law, fixing the share of each energy (nuclear, renewable).