By Tara Patel
Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Residents of rural France are seeking a moratorium on wind-farm construction, jeopardizing government plans to expand wind energy sevenfold over the next decade and hampering projects by EDF Energies Nouvelles SA and GDF Suez SA.
Organizers of a national petition that started this week demanded a debate on the economic justification for wind energy and the “visual blight” it creates in villages and at tourist sites such as Mont Saint Michel off the Normandy coast.
“Wind turbines have the potential to spark war in our villages,” said Yves Verilhac, the former director of a regional nature reserve who is spearheading the petition. “This is a complicated and highly politicized issue that needs further debate.”
France is seeking to boost wind power to as much as 25,000 megawatts of installed capacity by 2020, equal to seven nuclear reactors, from 3,400 megawatts at the start of this year. The government has said it wants to surpass a European Union target to get a fifth of energy from renewable sources by 2020. It’s promoting wind parks as the biggest contributor to the alternative-energy boom, anticipating investment of 15 billion euros ($21.6 billion) over the period.
“Reaching targets will be challenging for France,” Yohann Terry, a Paris-based analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, said yesterday by telephone, citing local opposition to projects and reluctance by municipal authorities to approve them.
Wind-Park Eyesores
The government’s plans face opposition from dozens of associations such as Vent de Colere that have sprung up in recent years to protest new wind projects. Wind farms on an industrial scale are an eyesore, Verilhac said by telephone on Aug. 3. They don’t create local jobs, they kill birds and aren’t an economical means to produce energy, he said.
Verilhac, whose fight has been documented by Vent de Colere and other groups, is focusing his campaign on planned wind parks visible from Mont Gerbier de Jonc, a mountain in the Massif Central region of rural Ardeche, where developers intend to increase turbines more than fourfold within five years.
Local resistance has made it increasingly difficult for EDF Energies, GDF Suez and Poweo SA to obtain planning approval for wind parks. Paris-based GDF Suez, which says it’s the biggest player on the French wind market with a 10 percent share, intends to add 400 megawatts of capacity at home to raise output about sevenfold in 2013. EDF Energies has had to curtail its ambitions in France as opposition hinders new developments.
Obstacles to Approval
“We aren’t expecting a huge increase in projects in France because there are so many obstacles to getting building permits,” EDF Energies Chairman Paris Mouratoglou said July 29 at a press conference. “It’s becoming harder and harder to get them.”
France lags behind European wind-power market leader Germany, which has 23,903 megawatts of installed capacity, and also Spain and Italy, according to statistics on the Web site of the Brussels-based European Wind Energy Association.
As French opposition stalls expansion, EDF Energies continues to grow abroad. It bought 180 turbines from SkyPower Corp. of Canada in the first half and reached an agreement with Greentech Energy System A/S for a stake in an Italian wind farm, Chief Executive Officer David Corchia said July 29. The company got “good prices” on both deals as the financial crisis reduced vendors’ bargaining power, he said.
The Paris-based company has 287 megawatts of installed wind capacity in France out of a total of 2,301 megawatts in Europe and North America, of which 863 megawatts are in the U.S. The company is targeting 4,000 megawatts of wind capacity by the end of 2012, including an unspecified number of new projects at home.
Grenelle Environnement
GDF Suez’s wind-energy plans are “on track,” an official at the utility said yesterday.
France’s environment plan, the Grenelle Environnement, calls for construction of wind farms nationwide, including offshore. Project development, currently mostly in the northeast, has stabilized at a pace of about 1,000 megawatts a year, according to a document published by Electricite de France SA’s grid operator Reseau de Transport d’Electricite last month.
“The energy revolution in France will be through energy savings and the development of renewable energies,” Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said in June, citing wind power as one of the technologies to be promoted.
Reseau de Transport d’Electricite, or RTE, expects France to have 5,000 megawatts of wind turbines installed by the end of 2010, less than half a target set in 2006 for capacity of 13,500 megawatts. If the nation continues to add 1,000 megawatts a year, it won’t meet its 2020 goal.
Capped Subsidies
“A number of factors could in the short or long term put the brakes on project deployment,” RTE said. These include increased local resistance, limits on subsidies that enable power suppliers to pay higher prices for wind energy, and bottlenecks in regional planning for designated wind-park zones, according to the grid operator.
“There’s a contradiction between the government’s targets and the reality on the ground,” said Patrick Massoni, head of investor relations at Paris-based Poweo. “If France wants to reach its goal, the process has to be simplified.”
An estimated 27 different permits are needed for a wind- power installation in France, he said.
The Federation Environnement Durable and Vent de Colere associations, which are against industrial-sized wind farms, publicize local protests against developments across France. A demonstration is planned next month against at least nine projects around Mont Saint Michel, the island tourist attraction that’s classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
Courts Delay Plans
“Each project is a battleground,” said Jean-Louis Butre, head of the Federation Environnement Durable, adding that court cases have delayed projects throughout France, including around Mont Saint Michel. “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.”
The anti-wind park lobby is pitted against environmental pressure groups such as France Nature Environnement, which back turbines.
“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,” France Nature Environnement said on its Web site. “The Eiffel Tower, now a veritable logo for France, wasn’t well liked by Parisians when it was built.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Tara Patel in Paris at tpatel2@bloomberg.net
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