A consultation organized by the government was launched on Thursday to allow the general public to express itself on the future of the French energy matrix, with nuclear energy at the center of the debates.
This consultation, which should last until December 31, had been promised by Emmanuel Macron when he announced, in February in Belfort, the construction of six new generation EPR nuclear reactors with the option of eight more.
It will be carried out through a participatory online platform and through various meetings in the country, as well as a “youth forum” that will bring together 200 young people in mid-January.
three big questions
It comes as Parliament is due to vote no later than 2024 on France’s future energy roadmap (establishing in particular how much of each energy).
This consultation will benefit from the follow-up of four guarantors from the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP), an independent administrative authority that has advised the government on its organizational methods. Its mission: to guarantee transparency, neutrality and the “duty of follow-up”, in this case a synthesis that will be added to the parliamentary work.
Three main questions will be asked of citizens, with the objective of carbon neutrality in 2050 (which consists of not generating more greenhouse gas emissions than we can absorb): how to adapt our consumption? How can we meet our energy needs and get out of our dependence on fossil fuels? How to plan and finance our energy transition?
“Achieving these goals implies real social choices about our way of consuming and producing, of moving, of living,” the government stressed in its press release on Thursday.
The government’s strategy aims to reduce consumption (sobriety and energy efficiency), and decarbonize the way electricity is generated, with renewable and nuclear energy.
The question of how
Could the conclusions of this consultation change these orientations?
“There are important axes that President Emmanuel Macron has outlined (…) but there is the question of how, that is what is at the center of this consultation and we must define more precisely the way in which we are going to detail this. policy”, underlines the Ministry of Energy Transition.
At the same time, another debate is scheduled to begin on October 27, on the construction of future EPRs, and this time organized directly by the CNDP. This public debate, a legal obligation for EDF, will therefore take place in parallel with the government consultation, until February 27, in Normandy – the first two EPRs are planned for Penly (Seine-Maritime) – but also in the rest of France.
Source: BFM TV
