France is unlikely to meet its target of reducing nuclear power to 50 per cent of its electricity supply by 2025, Environment Minister, Nicolas Hulot, said on Tuesday.
“Yes, it will be difficult to meet this timetable of 2025 without restarting electricity production from fossil fuels,” Hulot said after the government discussed an annual report from electricity networks firm RTE.
France currently generates some 77 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, according to the French Nuclear Energy Society – by far the highest proportion in the EU.
An environment law passed in 2015 required the government to reduce the share of electricity generated from nuclear energy to 50 per cent by 2025.
Hulot said that a new timetable would have to be considered that would “also enable our first priority, which is of course not to hamper the dynamic and progress of our exit from fossil fuels.”
A detailed plan, setting out which reactors should be closed, would be drawn up within a year, he said.
Hulot – a well-known ecologist, who was headhunted for the position of environment minister by President Emmanuel Macron – said that the RTE report showed that French energy consumption had “for the first time… not only been stabiliSed but reduced.”
“Our energy efficiency policy is already bearing fruit and must be reinforced,” he said, promising further efforts to remove obstacles to renewable power plants.