After the debate between the two rounds on Wednesday evening between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the spokesperson for the négaWatt association, Yves Marignac, returned Thursday, April 21 on franceinfo to the positions of the two candidates in the second round. of the 2022 presidential election concerning energy. For him, “Marine Le Pen does not offer any solution to decarbonize production” and Emmanuel Macron “fails to design a real transformation project towards a low-carbon economy”.
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franceinfo: What inspired you the exchanges of the candidates on the nuclear?
Yves Marignac: We had Marine Le Pen demonstrate that she does not actually have the ambition to conduct an effective climate policy and that she has difficulty completing the vision of an energy system. It claims both to follow an objective of reducing fossil fuels, to stop the development of renewable energies and even to dismantle those that exist, which would plunge France into darkness since our electricity system relies significantly on the production of wind turbines. There is therefore only nuclear power left and we know that any new reactor, beyond the one under construction at Flamanville, cannot be commissioned before 2035 at best. Marine Le Pen does not offer any solution to really decarbonize production. The President of the Republic opposite continues to say that there is no other choice than to use both nuclear and renewable energy. He denies from this point of view the conclusions of the reports of the Electricity Transmission Network (RTE) or the International Energy Agency. The possibility of 100% renewable is now recorded. He chooses a mix and draws a carbon-free trajectory.
Does this trajectory proposed by the outgoing president seem reasonable to you?
Emmanuel Macron completely forgets the dimension of controlling consumption and therefore fails to design a real transformation project towards a low-carbon economy. A trajectory that continues to bet on nuclear power is betting that new reactors can be commissioned and that current reactors can supply [de l’électricité] under profitable and safe conditions, for fifty to sixty years. We see today that, given the difficulties encountered by EDF in the nuclear fleet, counting on it at all costs is an extremely risky bet from the point of view of safety and costs. A more ambitious and resilient strategy would consist of accelerating further on renewables, but also, this component is sorely lacking, policies of sobriety and efficiency to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
Is energy sobriety not electorally promising?
I’m not sure that doesn’t add much. The President of the Republic himself uses this term of sobriety, badly in a certain way, […] on the amount of resources we consume. But the proof that this theme is on the agenda is that he himself uses this word. We have more and more positions taken by actors, economists and politicians who do not come from the environmental movements, in favor of this sobriety. Today we have a problem of overconsumption. The only way to reduce this pressure is to collectively moderate our consumption. There is a real appetite of the population for an evolution of this type.