March 2024 marked a grim milestone: the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. This record is part of a ten-month streak, each surpassing global temperature records.
The most pessimistic IPCC scenarios seem to be coming true. In this context, accelerating the energy transition should be a top priority for public authorities.
However, France’s solar potential remains largely untapped due to administrative and financial obstacles hindering the development of this strategic sector.
A Growing Gap with Other European Countries
In 2023, France saw its photovoltaic capacity increase by 3.2 GWc. This figure pales in comparison to the 14 GWc installed in Germany, the 5.6 GWc in Spain, or the 4 GWc deployed by Poland during the same period.
This is part of a national energy history marked by a predominance of nuclear power, which has long ensured low and stable prices for the country. With a long series of maintenance problems and difficulties launching the new generation of power plants, the situation has changed.
Then, climate awareness brought a sense of urgency to diversifying the energy mix, while the Ukrainian conflict highlighted the need to control energy costs through short and local circuits: individual or collective self-consumption.
An Ambition for Acceleration Hindered by Insufficient Means
Faced with these technical, ecological, and geopolitical challenges, a solution emerged: initiating a massive acceleration of renewable energies, including solar, to diversify the energy mix.
This is what the Climate and Resilience Law aimed to achieve by making the installation of photovoltaic panels mandatory on new buildings, and the APER Law by requiring the solarization of parking lots larger than 1500m².
However, the results of these ambitious policies are still pending. This is due to administrative complexities weighing heavily on each project.
The APER and Climate & Resilience laws have given rise to promising mechanisms but whose governance includes different administrative levels with heterogeneous rules. Within town halls, solar installation projects are treated like traditional real estate, and therefore have to wait long months for their building permits to be granted.
The requirements for technical studies are increasingly demanding and also slow down projects already hampered by the reluctance of insurers in this area, the lack of resources of public administrations, and the slowness of procedures constrained by the public procurement code.
A Crucial Need for Visibility
These administrative obstacles are compounded by a second difficulty: the lack of clarity and continuity in energy policies.
While Germany has maintained a consistent course since 2005, France has experienced advances in fits and starts, interspersed with unpredictable setbacks and regulatory changes with unclear outlines.
However, investing in an energy production asset intended to remain operational for 20 to 30 years requires good fiscal and administrative visibility.
To achieve the acceleration goals, the solar industry will therefore need to rely on a sufficiently resourced administration but also on a clear and adapted regulatory framework that will provide the visibility necessary for long-term action.
These transformations are all the more urgent as each element slowing down the deployment of solar capacity means higher costs but also additional CO2 emissions and therefore an intensification of the climate emergency. Let’s act and wait no longer.