French President Emmanuel Macron wants to achieve independence of the country's economy from fossil fuels through the development of nuclear and renewable energy. He stated this while speaking in Belfort (Burgundy), presenting the country's energy strategy for the period up to 2050. This was reported by the Euronews channel.
At least six new generation nuclear reactors (EPR2 - European Pressurized Nuclear Reactor) will be built in the country. The first one will be operational no later than 2035. The possibility of building another 8 additional reactors, as well as extending the service life of existing reactors, is currently being considered. As a result, 14 new nuclear reactors can be built in France by 2050, and the share of nuclear power plants in electricity generation will exceed 80%. Also, the President of the country outlined the goal - to increase the generation capacity of renewable energy sources (RES), 10 times - solar power plants and 2 times - wind.
Now nuclear power plants (NPPs) generate more than 70% of all electricity consumed in the country. In total, 56 nuclear reactors operate in France. The share of the sun accounts for up to 2%, wind - 8%, gas and coal - up to 9% of all generation. At the same time, it is thanks to the large capacities of nuclear power plants that France generates more electricity than it consumes, exporting it to Germany and Italy.
France announced its plans for nuclear energy without waiting for the decision of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, which is now considering the possibility of recognizing nuclear power plants as clean generation. For the main opponent of nuclear energy - Germany, such a decision by Paris is hardly a surprise, the differences on this issue between the two EU leaders have persisted since 2012.
In addition to France, nuclear energy has other supporters in the EU - the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland and Slovenia. Of the states that are not members of the union, nuclear power plants continue to be built in the UK.
France is included in the circle of four countries that are able to independently build nuclear power plants, along with Russia, the United States and China, said Artem Tuzov, executive director of the capital market department at Univer Capital. Other countries, of course, can also make a declarative decision to build a nuclear power plant, but they will not be able to do it themselves.
In this light, it is very significant that it was Russia, the United States, and China that never even started talking about taking nuclear generation out of the energy balance. In France, there were such conversations in 2015-2017, during the presidential campaign of Emmanuel Macron. Then he promised to reduce the share of nuclear generation in the country to 50%. But now, after the energy crisis of 2021, he has changed his approach to nuclear power plants.
The development of nuclear power plants has always been more of a political problem due to diametrically opposed positions on this issue in Germany and France. The decision of Paris will not affect the pan-European course towards the development of renewable energy sources, Vladimir Gorchakov, head of the ACRA sustainable development risk assessment group, believes.
The policy for the complete rejection of carbon generation is calculated until 2050 and will be implemented, Tuzov agrees. But he notes that the energy crisis has shown the weakness of renewable energy in wind and solar. In fact, now the EU is following the path of the "Green Square" concept proposed by Rosatom. This concept involves the generation of energy from renewable energy sources from four sources - nuclear energy, hydropower, wind and solar. But due to the specifics of the EU territory, it is difficult to count on the development of hydropower, so they want to replace it with gas.
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