The Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher ensures that France is ahead of Germany in terms of renewable energy consumption. But she does not specify that this French advance is extremely short.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher welcomed the vote for a European agreement to reform the electricity market, Wednesday October 18 on franceinfo. A “good news for the French bill”according to her, but especially for the nuclear sector which was included in the project despite German reluctance.
Asked about the risk of increasing investments in nuclear power to the detriment of renewable energies, the Minister of Energy Transition made a point of reminding us: “France today has more renewable energy in its final consumption than the Germans.” True or false ?
Nuclear power, big winner of the electricity agreement? “Yes, agrees Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher. But, “France today has more renewable energies than the Germans”, observes the minister who guarantees that she wants to “invest massively” in both. pic.twitter.com/E5LiA1s8Mn
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) October 18, 2023
An extremely short French lead
Agnès Pannier-Runacher is right, but really by a hair. The share of renewables in energy consumption is almost equivalent, in reality, between France and Germany.
According to provisional figures from the Ministry of Energy Transition, 20.7% of the energy consumed in France in 2022 came from renewable sources (wind power, hydraulic power or recycling of waste to make biomass in particular), compared to 20.4% in Germany , according to also provisional figures from the German Federal Environment Agency. France is therefore well ahead of Germany, but by only 0.3 percentage points. Talking about a French advance without specifying that it is so short is a bit misleading.
France ahead for transport and heating, Germany for electricity
In detail, the French consume more energy produced from renewables than the Germans in the transport and heating and cooling sectors. Renewables represented 8.9% of the energy used in transport in France in 2022, compared to 6.8% in Germany. Regarding heating and cold, they accounted for 27.2% of the energy consumed in France last year, compared to 17.4% among our neighbors.
Conversely, Germany is well ahead of France in the electricity sector. Some 46.2% of the electricity consumed by Germans last year came from renewables, compared to 28% of that consumed the same year by the French.
Faster increase in Germany
The share of renewables in the energy consumed has been increasing steadily for around twenty years in both countries. It was only 9% in 2004 and has therefore more than doubled since then, according to curves from Eurostat, the statistics service of the European Commission.
However, it increased even faster across the Rhine. The share of renewables represented only 6% of the energy consumed in Germany in 2004, it has more than tripled since then and has almost caught up with the French level.
Since 2012, the German and French curves follow each other very closely in reality, sometimes France is ahead, sometimes it is Germany, but the difference in proportion is not enormous.
Two other nuances can be brought to the satisfaction of the French Minister of Energy Transition. On the one hand, according to the latest comparison on a European scale which is possible, with consolidated data recorded by Eurostat and relayed by INSEE, the French and German levels remained below the average of the countries of the European Union. in 2021, established at 21.7%.
The 2020 objective not reached in France
On the other hand, despite clear progress, France remains far from the objective it set in response to a directive from the European Commission in 2009. The share of renewables in its final energy consumption was to reach 23% in 2020. That year, France was the only EU country not to have reached its target. Three years later, the level requested in 2020 has still not been reached.
Contacted by franceinfo, the Ministry of Energy Transition explains that the objective that France had set itself was particularly ambitious at the time and therefore more difficult to achieve. In comparison, Germany had set itself the objective of reaching 18% renewables in its final energy consumption in 2020, as can be found in the archives of the European Commission. A lower objective, which was exceeded: renewables reached 19% that year.
The ministry also recalls that some countries have purchased percentages of renewables abroad to achieve their objective, which France refused to do because its energy is largely carbon-free due to the significant share of nuclear in its energy mix. For example, Belgium purchased half a percentage of renewables from abroad to reach its 13% target in 2020, as RTBF reported last February.
The European Commission has set a new objective for France: the share of renewables must represent 33% of the energy consumed during the year 2030. Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher recently introduced a law to accelerate the deployment of renewable energies , it was promulgated in March 2023.