“We are in the process of building a new energy model in France based on nuclear and renewable energy”, said Thursday, February 10 on franceinfo François de Rugy, LREM deputy for Maine-et-Loire and former Minister of Ecology, after the announcement by Emmanuel Macron of the roadmap on the energy future of France. The Head of State particularly wants the construction of six new generation reactors and insisted on the need to “to resume the thread of the great nuclear adventure in France”.
“It’s the good old French idea. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket“, launches François de Rugy. “To meet the challenge of both the climate and the low-carbon economy, we must have the three pillars of this French energy policy”, he argued. It is necessary “First, reduce our consumption wherever we can thanks to technology. Then, develop renewable energies. And finally renew French nuclear power with future reactors.”
The LREM deputy believes that the President of the Republic “traces a path where we take the time each time for analysis, debate and decision”. According to him, France is not, today, “able to ensure the security of electricity supply without nuclear power, because we have no electricity storage capacity”. It is “a fresh product that does not store or very little”. He affirms that “if we wanted to have all consumption covered by renewable energies, we would need either large storage capacities or a drastic drop in electricity consumption, which the French would not accept”.
François de Rugy presents himself as a “pragmatic ecologist” and acknowledges having “advanced on the nuclear issue”, when he was Minister of Ecology. He recalls that “For 20 years, everything was put on hold, as if we were going to be able to bear the fact that we were closing the old oil-fired power stations, the old coal-fired power stations, that we were not building new power stations gas”.
It points to renewable energies which “encountered a number of hostilities” and emphasizes that we have “no longer nuclear, we have not prepared the extension of all the plants”. The situation is therefore “today more tense”.
The deputy therefore boasts of Emmanuel Macron’s desire to have a “10-year strategy”. “It is absolutely necessary to have this path, so that France does not find itself, either in a situation to relaunch thermal power stations which would be harmful to the climate, nor in a situation of risk on the supply of electricity”adds François de Rugy.