Hardly any renewable energies: How France uses nuclear energy to protect the climate

It was around four years ago that Emmanuel Macron hurled a reply to the motto of the then American President Donald Trump, “make America great again”, which was intended to send a double message: “Make the planet great again”.

The newly elected French President fought to preserve the Paris Climate Agreement, which the United States had just terminated, and called for multilateral cooperation.

The dynamic Macron can often present itself well internationally.

But what about climate policy in France?

To begin with, a few figures: Great Britain has installed thousands of offshore wind turbines.

Despite its long coastline, France still has none.

Only 9 percent of French electricity came from renewable energies in 2019, in Germany around 35 percent.

Wind and solar energy only account for 1.8 percent of total French energy consumption, including oil and gas. Ten years ago, the proportion was only a quarter of what it is today, but France is still boiling because of the slow expansion of green energies on a low flame.

Less emissions thanks to nuclear energy

The neighboring country does not have to hide in the fight against climate change, on the contrary.

Thanks to its high nuclear content, the French emit far less CO2 on average than Germans, Americans, Russians, Dutch or Japanese.

The emissions of the Germans per head of the population exceed those of the French by three quarters.

No other country in the world relies on the nuclear industry like France - even after the oldest kiln in Fessenheim on the Upper Rhine was shut down in 2020 after 43 years of operation.

More than 70 percent of French electricity generation comes from nuclear power plants.

According to Macron's request, the proportion should drop to 50 percent by 2035, for which he wants to shut down 14 reactors.

From a German point of view, this is only a snail's pace, but in the French context the partial exit is a challenge.

The anti-nuclear movement is a minority.

Trade unions fear the deforestation of the affected regions, and at the same time resistance to wind turbines is increasing.

Two candidates for next year's presidential election, Marine Le Pen and the conservative politician Xavier Bertrand, are in favor of a construction freeze.

The defenders of nuclear energy consider the partial phase-out to be nonsensical, both economically and in terms of climate policy.

France is simply replacing one climate-friendly form of energy with another.

The French nuclear reactors are safe and could go on for a long time to provide inexpensive electricity, they say.

In the United States, maturity extensions are now approaching 80 years.

Blown budgets

However, these calculations underestimate the sharp rise in costs for the nuclear industry. The retrofits are expensive because of the rightly strict safety requirements; and when it comes to new buildings, there are a lot of question marks. For more than a decade and a half, the French have been building an EPR 3 nuclear power plant in Olkiluoto, Finland, which has blown all schedules and cost budgets. The construction of the same type of reactor in Flamanville on the Norman coast is almost as hopelessly overpriced and delayed. France has lost a lot of technical competence since the construction wave in the 1970s and 1980s.

There is no flagship for the hoped-for export of nuclear energy.

The British have the French build an EPR at Hinkley Point, but there are also many places there.

The majority state-owned energy company EDF has lost more than half of its market value in ten years.

At the moment, only the Chinese seem able to build EPR reactors.

EDF now wants to develop smaller power plants in order to find customers.

What is clear is that the French will not phase out nuclear energy entirely.

Today that would not only be economic nonsense, but also hardly technically feasible.

The government watches energy prices like milk on the stove.

The horror of the “yellow vests” movement, which was also triggered by the rise in gasoline prices, is still in her bones.

But how should climate-friendly behavior be achieved without price increases? The government is deliberately avoiding this question. She wants to give constitutional status to climate protection, but at the same time her policy remains surprisingly vague. The crawling pace will not continue for long.