a balanced alternative regardless of populist pressures | EUROtoday

une very small window to convey immensely vital textual content. Thursday, February 12, the Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, took benefit of a political lull to unveil after which publish, by decree, the third multi-annual power program (PPE3), a strategic doc that has been the sufferer of political errors and populist pressures for greater than two years.

France ought to have introduced it earlier than the 1^er July 2023, the varied governments have continued to postpone the deadline, both as a result of majorities can’t be discovered to move a regulation within the National Assembly, or for concern of being censored by the National Rally (RN).

Expected by many industrial sectors, this PPE3 doesn’t revisit the foremost balances of the Belfort speech delivered by Emmanuel Macron in February 2022: within the subsequent ten years, France will depend on electrical energy manufacturing primarily of nuclear origin, with the development of six new EPRs, and even eight others as an possibility. But the targets for renewable electrical energy have been partly decreased, with a big brake on onshore wind energy and photovoltaics.

For months, the correct and the far proper have been calling for a moratorium on these sectors in a totally irrational means: with the primary commissioning of a brand new reactor not anticipated till 2038, renewables are important to the power mixture of the approaching years. Ultimately, the important is preserved, even when the pressures had a sure affect.

An formidable course

Intended to position France on the trail to carbon neutrality in 2050, this multi-year program is an important step. Electricity manufacturing is the central aspect not solely of France’s local weather commitments, which has promised to cut back its greenhouse gasoline emissions by 55% in 2030 in comparison with 1990, but in addition of its sovereignty. In a world torn by the predatory impulses of oil and gasoline exporting international locations, notably Russia and the United States, power dependence is a weak point.

Today, France imports 99% of the hydrocarbons which represent 60% of its power consumption, which price it 58 billion euros in 2024 and exposes it to all geopolitical shocks. To start to reverse this development, this system units a primary formidable milestone: reaching 60% low-carbon power consumption in 2030.

This goal is unattainable with out an acceleration within the electrification of makes use of. There could be no level in producing increasingly electrical energy if the French proceed to journey and warmth themselves with fossil fuels extracted hundreds of kilometers from Europe, in typically hostile international locations. This second a part of the technique remains to be far too topic to political hazards. Due to authorities instability, modifications desired by totally different ministers, funds cuts which brought about renovation assist to fluctuate drastically, gross sales of warmth pumps collapsed in 2025.

And, even when extra electrical automobiles have been bought in Europe than thermal automobiles in December 2025, the rise in energy nonetheless stays very fragile. Only a proactive coverage, stable sufficient to withstand the local weather skeptics of the far proper and versatile sufficient to assist households and companies, will permit France to choose this virtuous path climatically and economically.