FRENCH FIGHTING WIND

Mont Saint Michel Turbines Spark Village Wars in Energy Fight
Tara Patel, August 6, 2009 (Bloomberg News)

SUMMARY
The French government, like so many other governments from China to Germany and including the Obama administration, sees expansion of the nation’s wind capacity as the surest path toward meeting its national New Energy goals. France sees wind as the way to meet its EU obligation to obtain 20% of its power from New Energy sources by 2020.

The French energy establishment, enamored though it remains with nuclear power, is nevertheless committed to developing wind. Powerhouses like EDF Energies Nouvelles SA and GDF Suez SA and Poweo SA have big projects planned.

The Grenelle Environnement, France’s environment plan, includes wind projects across the country as well as off France’s coasts. (See the July 2009 Blue Book) Currently, the country is building about 1,000 megawatts a year, mostly in the northeast.

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Reseau de Transport d’Electricite (RTE) expects France to have 5,000 megawatts of wind capacity by the end of 2010, less than 50% of the 2006/07 goal of 13,500 megawatts. If it keeps at the 1,000 megawatts per year pace, France cannot meet its 2020 target.

There’s just one small obstacle: That world-famous French aesthetic sense. A network of associations, including most famously Vent de Colere (literally “wind of anger” - English translation of the page from Babel Fish here) and the Federation Environnement Durable (which means “durable environment federation” - English translation of one of their pages from Babel Fish here) have decided they don’t like the look of the turbines on the French landscape. In what has also emerged as a pattern among anti-wind groups in the U.S., these groups have subsequently begun to find other aspects of wind projects objectionable, cataloguing insubstantial anecdotal evidence of their evils (the noise, the impacts on birds and bats, the effects on wildlife habitat, etc.) and overstating them in a public display of hostility.

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A current fight is shaping up over a project planned for the Normandy coast site at Mont Saint Michel.

The wind energy industries in many countries have learned there are places it is just not a good idea to try to build wind projects. A place like Mont Saint Michel probably falls in that category. The Mont Saint Michel island attraction is classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site. A September demonstration is being organized against some 9 proposed Mont Saint Michel projects. It has galvanized the ire of the French. (Here’s a tip from NewEnergyNews: They’re an eminently civil and sensible people but don’t rile up the French.)

It very well could be the case that on the beautiful Mont Saint Michel region of the Normandy coast a wind installation would indeed be a “visual blight” just as nobody would think of putting a wind project into the heart of Big Sur on the California coast.

The Normanday coast with Mont Saint Michel in distance. (click to enlarge)

This does not mean the government is misguided in seeking to increase France’s installed wind capacity from its present 3,400 megawatts to 25,000 megawatts by 2020, thereby avoiding the need for 7 new nuclear facilities. Though Vent de Colere’s web page rages against the economics of wind, there is little doubt that NEW wind is a better buy than NEW nuclear in the absence of the generous subsidies and protections the French government provides for its state-owned nuclear industry. That is especially true when the risks associated with nuclear energy are included in the calculation. (See Economics of Wind from the European Wind Energy Association)

Proposed new wind projects are expected, even in the face of the vociferous opposition, to bring into France an investment of 15 billion euros ($21.6 billion).

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GDF Suez, based in Paris, is the biggest French wind developer, with 10% of the market. It has plans to build 400 new megawatts this year and increase its capacity 7 times over by 2013.

EDF Energies, also based in Paris, cancelled its comparably ambitious plans for wind expansion in France due to the opposition. It will build and operate wind in Canada (it bought 180 turbines there this year), Italy and the U.S. (where it has 863 U.S. megawatts already). EDF Energies owns 2300+ megawatts of wind worldwide and is going for 4,000 megawatts by the end of 2012. It says it might build some French projects but nothing is yet specified.

What could get companies like EDF Energies back to work building wind in France, in addition to a settling of the citizen opposition, are (1) less severe limits on the national feed-in tariff and (2) streamlined regulation. At present, a project requires ~27 different permits. Developers want pre-designated zones for wind projects.

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COMMENTARY
It is possibly indicative that the wind opponents are described as “residents of rural France.” New Energy advocates in the government are necessarily urban and more cosmopolitan. Though generalizations are always inadequate, the Vent de Colere and the Federation Environnement Durable opposition is expressly and explicitly to “industrial” wind, i.e., utility-scale wind. The scope of such large-scale development is likely to be intimidating to the minority most familiar with the village scale. This is a familiar pattern in every country where wind has expanded and does not discredit the passionate rural citizens seeking to protect bucolic beauty.

Yves Verilhac, a former director of a regional nature reserve, is a leader in the French anti-wind movement. He calls the industrial-scale projects eyesores. He also complains that they don’t create local jobs. In the U.S., wind projects require a pair of maintenance workers for every dozen turbines, so apparently the French wind industry maintenance people commute from Germany. Or perhaps Paris. Well, everyone says public transportation in France is excellent.

Verilhac worries about the impact of wind projects on the landscape. His concern might be better directed toward the covered-up leaks of radioactive materials from French nuclear plants. (See FRENCH NUKE LEAKS: HOW MANY IS TOO MANY?)

Verilhac also says turbines kill birds. True enough. But unless French birds are different than birds everywhere else, more of them are killed by tall buildings, housecats and cars than are harmed by wind turbines. That’s a lot to protest against so Verilhac is going to need help, if any readers have free time.

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There is a major campaign against a big planned increase in wind projects visible from Mont Gerbier de Jonc, a mountain in the Massif Central region of rural Ardeche. Perhaps that is like trying to build in Yelllowstone. Perhaps it is a fitting site. There is a difference and it is a difference that a wind industry must understand before it can expand. Understanding siting allowed the German wind industry to build 23,000 megawatts of installed capacity and lead the world until the U.S. industry, which has also learned many of the key principles of siting, moved Germany to 2nd place last year. Spain and Italy also seem to understand the crucial siting concepts and are far ahead of France in wind. Perhaps Spanish and Italian birds don’t have the same problems with wind turbines as French birds. Well, a lot of people say the French, they are strange birds.

It is possibly also indicative that most of France’s wind development is in its northeast where, because of proximity to nations that have aggressively built big wind capacities like Germany and Denmark, people are more familiar with wind projects and are probably less inclined to believe the misinformation coming from Verilhac, Vent de Colere and the Federation Environnement Durable.

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Environmental groups like
France Nature Environnement have stood up to wind’s opponents in France. Besides contradicting the misinformation, pro-wind groups make one other simple, crucial point: The “eyesores” and “visual blight” that will come with global climate change, especially on France’s magnificent coast, will be far more indiscriminate and devastating than anything the wind industry can do. And the wind industry is doing everything it can, and will do everything the people of France allow it to do, to prevent that indiscriminate devastation.

One last point about French taste: Right after the Eiffel Tower was built, the French called it an eyesore. A government publication called the long shadow of the tower “…a black blot the odious shadow of the odious column built up of riveted iron plates.” The immortal French novelist Guy de Mauppasant went inside the tower restaurant for lunch everyday because, he said, it was the only place in Paris where he didn’t have to look at it.

Opinions change. These things can grow on a people.

Vent de Colere says this is an energy disaster but NewEnergyNews says that turbine is probably up and running again while...(click to enlarge)
... Chernobyl may never again be habitable. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Yves Verilhac, former director of a nature reserve, anti-wind activist: “Wind turbines have the potential to spark war in our villages…This is a complicated and highly politicized issue that needs further debate.”
- Yohan Terry, analyst, Exane BNP Paribas in Paris: “Reaching targets will be challenging for France…”
- Paris Mouratoglou, Chair, EDF Energies: “We aren’t expecting a huge increase in projects in France because there are so many obstacles to getting building permits…It’s becoming harder and harder to get them.”

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- Jean-Louis Borloo, French Minister of Energy: “The energy revolution in France will be through energy savings and the development of renewable energies…”
- RTE report on the French wind industry: “A number of factors could in the short or long term put the brakes on project deployment…”
Patrick Massoni, head of investor relations, Poweo SA: “There’s a contradiction between the government’s targets and the reality on the ground…If France wants to reach its goal, the process has to be simplified.”
- Jean-Louis Butre, head of the Federation Environnement Durable: “Each project is a battleground…What is equally bad is that if these projects are withdrawn, they will be put somewhere else where other people will have to live with them.”
- France Nature Environnement said on its Web site: “Under the guise of defending the environment, wind-power opponents should pay more attention to the serious environmental impact of other forms of energy such as nuclear…The Eiffel Tower, now a veritable logo for France, wasn’t well liked by Parisians when it was built.”