An administrative failure has hampered the latest state tender for solar installations, delaying the launch of these new projects by six months, after a recent similar setback for wind turbines, the industry said Friday.
These difficulties come at a time when the government wants to accelerate the deployment of renewables in France, which lags behind some of its neighbors. The December 2022 call for tenders, managed by the Energy Regulation Commission (Cre), concerned a total capacity of 900 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic projects (ground and roof). But a change in the specifications that was not very explicit led to the non-compliance of a large number of files submitted, explain the Syndicat des énergies renouvelables (Ser) and the solar union Enerplan. Only 23 files were selected.
The same type of problem had affected the last call for tenders concerning onshore wind power, for which only 54 MW of projects could be selected (out of 900 MW to be allocated). To compensate for this failure, the next round of solar tenders, scheduled for June, will cover more than 2 gigawatts (GW) of projects, the two trade associations said in a joint statement. They welcome “a record volume that should more than compensate for the failure rate of the previous session”.
After the incident on the wind, the Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher had considered the outcome of the tender “unacceptable”, according to his entourage. “Through new tenders and the growth of PPAs (agreements for the sale of electricity by mutual agreement, editor’s note) that the law of acceleration of renewable energy came to stimulate, the objective of the ministry is to continue the acceleration of the deployment of ENR,” says the ministry Friday.
According to the solar industry, the June session and its record volume should “do better than 2022.” According to Enerplan, some 2.5 GW of new solar capacity was installed in France last year, which is less than the 2.7 GW expected in 2021. Instead, the industry hopes to reach 3 GW by 2023, which, with an expected total of about 19 GW by the end of the year, should bring the country closer to its 2023 target of 20 GW.
The ministerial will to catch up the “missed” of December, “the sector also takes it as a commitment for the success of the law of acceleration and the future law energy-climate”, said to the AFP Daniel Bour, the president of Enerplan, which will follow closely the decrees of application of this law and the debates expected from this summer on the future energy roadmap of the country.
