- French energy minister to hold meeting with 12 counterparts
- Paris pushes for nuclear power to be considered a clean energy
According to Bloomberg article published on February 27, 2023, France is mobilizing a pro-nuclear alliance to defend its atomic industry, as the European Union negotiates the next phase of a transition to cleaner energies.
French Energy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher is inviting 12 of her counterparts for breakfast on the sidelines of an EU meeting in Stockholm on Tuesday to discuss how nuclear power can help safeguard energy security, while lowering carbon emissions, according to her office.
France, which gets most of its electricity from atomic reactors, is spearheading a push to recognize nuclear power as a force to meet climate goals. That view has been met with skepticism in Berlin, but Paris recently succeeded in obtaining a carve-out from Brussels for renewable hydrogen made in countries with a low-carbon energy mix, including nuclear.
“The US, the UK, South Korea, China, India and even Japan are contemplating using nuclear energy as an important means to decarbonize their economies, and we need to be on the same level playing field,” Pannier-Runacher said Monday.
The next battleground is a definition of “green hydrogen” in an EU directive known as RED3, which would set targets for using the fuel in industry and transport. France is pushing for nuclear to be considered a clean energy source, while countries such as Spain and Germany are focusing on hydrogen derived from renewables such as wind or solar.
The EU sees hydrogen as a key pillar of its efforts to slash emissions by 55% by 2030. The outcome of the negotiations could jeopardize a flagship project to pump the fuel from Barcelona to Marseille and then onto Berlin via a pipeline, known as BarMar or H2Med.
For “green investments,” France has already reached a compromise with Germany to allow nuclear energy and natural gas to receive funding from environmental investors. While that added the two energy sources to the so-called EU taxonomy — a list of activities deemed in line with the bloc’s transition to climate neutrality — there are still concerns the move could divert investment away from renewables.
The French initiative was welcomed by a number of other EU nations.
“We are happy that nuclear somehow came back to the discussion in the EU — years ago it was kind of a forbidden topic,” said Anna Moskwa, Poland’s minister of climate and environment. “It is of our common interest to build stable sources, that is why Poland decided to develop nuclear.”
Moskwa will join ministers from Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, the Netherlands and Finland at the breakfast meeting, Pannier-Runacher’s office said.
The French proposal for a nuclear alliance would “ensure we have smart investments for the lowest price possible,” said Dutch Energy Minister Rob Jetten. “It’s a smart thing to do.”
