Because in France the battle for wind power is shaking up the elections. Financial Times Report
The opposition to wind in France is small, but "very organized, virulent and with a lot of financial support". The in-depth analysis of the Financial Times
As the French election season deepens, the fishermen of Saint-Brieuc on the north coast of Brittany have received an influx of distinguished visitors, including former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. The Financial Times writes.
But instead of discussing Brexit and fishing, Barnier and other conservative politicians focused on another bugbear: a € 2.4 billion offshore wind farm project that sparked such ire among locals that a flotilla went down. at sea to protest when subsea construction work began earlier this year.
Calling it a "failure" and a "disaster," Barnier, who is also a former minister of the environment and agriculture, has joined a chorus of calls to stop the project.
Barnier is one of five politicians who are campaigning in this week's primary to choose the center-right candidate in the April presidential election.
What would normally be a local dispute has become a polarizing national election issue as France prepares for what could be a tumultuous campaign. The rumblings about Saint-Brieuc's plans have been drawn into a broader confrontation against wind farms that is monopolizing space in televised debates and has become a rallying cry from the right.
Within weeks of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, where governments pledged to cut their emissions, the growing battle over wind power is becoming a crucial issue for France. While support for wind energy is strong among the French public, concerted opposition has already slowed investment plans sharply – even before the issue became so important in national politics.
As a result, the government is lagging behind on its goals of producing more electricity from the wind at a time when it is pushing hard to decarbonise its economy.
The controversy was particularly acute for offshore wind. A decade after the first projects were announced, the first wind farms will only go into operation next year, with Saint-Brieuc expected to be operational at the end of 2023.
"People are really asking when it will be finished," says Henri Labbé, the mayor of the nearby port of Erquy, who laments how politicized the project has become. “It bothers me a lot. First came the senators – at first they were in favor, now they are against – and so have departmental politicians. [President Nicolas] Sarkozy launched it, [François] Hollande continued it and [Emmanuel] Macron inherited it. If you stop it today, it will cost France a lot ”.
A laggard of renewables
France's aging energy infrastructure and pressure to reduce its oil and gas consumption in the coming decades are forcing the country to completely rethink its energy strategy.
A European nuclear power champion since the 1960s and a major developer of hydroelectricity, France has remained unnoticed for years by its larger neighbors in the development of renewable alternatives such as wind farms and solar plants, although now investments are increasing. .
Like the rest of the EU, France is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. At the same time, Macron has set a goal of reducing dependence on nuclear energy for its energy production to 50% by 2035, from just under 70% today. While providing France with a low-emission power source, the country's reactors are reaching the end of their expected 40-year lifespan.
Attacking green policies has proved fertile ground for far-right politicians in the past, especially after the motorists' gilets jaunes demonstrations that erupted in 2018 when Macron introduced a fuel tax, which he then withdrew.
Named after the yellow vests that motorists wear in their cars in the event of an accident, the protests have morphed into a wider series of grievances against the administration just 18 months into Macron's mandate.
Partly rooted in the perception of the disconnection between Paris and the rural world, this sentiment has also found its expression in some of the reactions against wind farms.
“Wind energy has become very symbolic and fits into existing themes, such as rural life and the conservation of the French countryside, which are then politicized,” says Alexandre Roesch of the French ERA advocacy group on renewable energy.
The opposition to wind energy is particularly strong and uniform on the far right.
Eric Zemmour, a TV talk show polemicist and aspiring far-right president who launched his campaign this week, called offshore wind farms a "catastrophe" that would destroy parts of the French coast spared from destruction in World War II.
Marine Le Pen, currently the favorite to get to a runoff against Macron, said she would also take down existing turbines. Two years ago, in an incendiary comment, she managed to combine two controversial political arguments – immigrants and wind turbines. "Everyone thinks they should be there, but nobody wants them next to them," he said.
But it has also become a big theme among Les Républicains. Politicians like Xavier Bertrand – who heads the northern Hauts-de-France region and is a rival of Barnier for the nomination – like to compare their provincial roots to the supposed Parisian elite who go to work on electric scooters and have no idea of the travails of motorists. of small towns or villagers affected by the giant wind turbines in their backyards.
Even the most pro-aeolian of the center-right candidates, Valérie Pécresse, called for a total rethink during her tour of the Saint-Brieuc area.
As right-wing election contenders try to outdo each other, the shame has reached new heights, with wind farms identified as useless or destructive and taking center stage in televised campaign debates.
In one of these weeks, Bertrand said he would end all projects if he were elected president in April. When asked in a prime-time television interview last month about his views on energy, Barnier bluntly said, "I'm against wind farms, quite clearly."
Barnier's surprise slip to the right on other electoral issues, including migration and security, when he had long been seen as more moderate, fueled his electoral momentum.
"When you see in Saint-Brieuc how they're trying to plant turbines in the middle of the sea, when the economy doesn't make sense, it's not serious," said Barnier, who instead favors solar energy, as well as new investments in nuclear power. .
Despite explicit opposition from conservative politicians, polls consistently show that the majority of French people support wind power – far more than nuclear power plants.
But age and political affiliation make the difference. When asked how they would feel if a wind turbine were installed near their home, more than 60 percent of far-right or center-right sympathizers would object, as a September Odoxa poll for French newspaper Figaro showed, instead of the widespread support of the left. Older voters were also more likely to want a slowdown in installing the wind farm.
Winds of change in Saint-Brieuc
The Bay of Saint-Brieuc is one of the richest fishing grounds in France – from scallops and whelks to cuttlefish, crabs and sole – and fishermen fear the acoustic disturbance of construction and the release of aluminum into the sea from the anodes that protect the structures in subsea steel from electrochemical corrosion.
Initial acceptance of the project in the area has given way to skepticism and even outright opposition, exacerbated by long delays in authorizations. The start of drilling in recent months into the hard rock of the seabed to build the turbine foundation caused an uproar after a boat leaked hydraulic fuel, prompting Spanish developer Iberdrola to temporarily halt construction.
Some are now happy that the protesters' demands have been put in the spotlight. Grégory Le Drougmaguet, a marine biologist appointed by the local fisheries committee to monitor the project, says the fishermen in the area "are full of hope because of the presidential elections".
“The construction is very, very scary,” says Le Drougmaguet.
Emmanuel Rollin, the head of Ailes Marines, the Iberdrola-owned group behind the project, says the environmental impact was limited and within legal limits, and that the wind farm would go into operation as planned.
But wind energy advocates in France are concerned that a small but dogmatic anti-wind movement could help sour mood nationwide, including through disinformation campaigns.
One example was the alarmist social media posts about "wind farm cemeteries" after photos of disused turbine blades piling up in a landfill began circulating in France several months ago.
Although extracted from an actual report on the problems posed by blades, often made of difficult-to-recycle composites, the images were from landfills in the United States, not France, where there are strict rules on how to recycle those materials.
"It is simply not true that wind energy does not effectively tackle climate disorder, that wind turbines only run 25% of the time, that they are not recyclable, or that there are gigantic blade cemeteries in France," the minister wrote. French energy and environment Barbara Pompili in a September document for the France Energie Eolienne (FEE) lobby which represents developers and producers of wind farms.
According to the head of the FEE Michel Gioria, the French opposition to wind energy is small, but "very organized, virulent and with a lot of financial support". Public hearings around wind farm projects often attract 300 to 400 people who come from neighboring regions in an orchestrated fashion, he adds.
"It puts us on the wrong track when we need society to try to reach a consensus on these issues [such as energy]," says Gioria, adding that at the current rate of spread of renewable energy, France would not reach "any of its objectives, on all issues relating to the energy transition ".
Labbé, the mayor of Erquy, recalls how the residents' fears quickly subsided in a nearby village where he lived after witnessing the installation of three wind turbines more than ten years ago.
“There was a farmer who was worried that the hens would not lay eggs, but the day we installed the turbines the hens looked up and couldn't care less,” said Labbé. In Erquy, he added, many objectors were second home owners living in Paris, and most of the residents were in their 60s who tended to oppose any new development, including a waterfront skateboard park.
France is not alone in facing a politicized backlash. In the United States, where President Joe Biden has launched a plan to install wind farms off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts over the next decade, his predecessor Donald Trump has criticized the projects.
Trump called the turbines "monsters" that "kill all birds" in a British TV interview this week.
But project delays, on top of the political storm, are already giving some companies in France the jitters. A senior executive at a large French company involved in the launch of renewable energy plants says some board members have also begun to question the virtue of investing in France.
"The local opposition to all wind projects is violent and problematic, and blocks projects for years in bureaucracy and judicial cases", says the manager, adding that "even some financiers have lost faith".
The wait has also taken its toll on producers. GE Renewable Energy, formerly Alstom, withdrew from two of three deals to supply the next French offshore plants in 2019, citing excessive delays that have left one of its blade factories running under capacity.
Macron has so far tried to straddle both camps, recently signaling his support for next-generation nuclear reactors in France, as well as an ongoing commitment to renewable energy.
But nuclear power can only help up to a point. Even if the operational life of French reactors were extended, if several new ones were built and if other renewable energy sources were increased, France would still need between 65 and 103 gigawatts of installed capacity from onshore and offshore wind farms by the end of. 2050 to reach zero carbon, according to network operator RTE estimates – from 17.6 GW at the end of 2020.
France aims to derive 40% of its energy production from renewable sources in 2030, up from just under a quarter last year.
"If we want to reach net zero [in France by 2050], we can't do without wind farms," said Vincent Bales, the head of WPD offshore France, a wind specialist who works with EDF on projects at the off the coast of Normandy.
Progress in sight?
France's three other offshore wind projects, awarded in 2012 together with Saint-Brieuc, are at least slated to take off without as many difficulties or discussions on fishing grounds.
The first, off the west coast of France at the Saint-Nazaire shipyard hub, is expected to be operational in 2022. Backed by France's EDF, Canada's Enbridge and Canada's largest pension fund, the site, with 80 turbines and one 480MW capacity, had yet to overcome legal disputes, but got the green light from the French Conseil d'Etat – the highest court for administrative matters – two years ago.
"Since 2019, there has been a real acceleration effect, and orders have started to arrive," says Matthieu Blandin, head of offshore wind at Valorem, a French company that worked on the development of the Saint-Nazaire project together. to its main financiers, and which is now vying for maintenance contracts.
France has made some changes to its system, with future legal appeals on the projects being brought directly to the Conseil d'Etat, bypassing the intermediate courts.
But projects are still dealt with on a case-by-case basis, without the broader regional planning that some countries have adopted, which can also facilitate the public consultation process.
"It is true that France decided after others to invest in offshore wind, and once it did it also took longer [to proceed] than other countries," says Ailes Marines' Rollin.
He is adamant, however, that even the electoral backlash will not stop the Saint-Brieuc project now that it is underway.
"There are some very strong positions that have been taken by politicians," Rollin says, adding that critics in the public sphere have never asked the company about the project. “They never contacted us. They are political positions ”.
(Extract from the foreign press review of eprcomunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/eolico-francia-proteste/ on Sat, 04 Dec 2021 07:32:49 +0000.