French Solar Industry Pushing Government To Set Stronger Targets

July 14th, 2014 by James Ayre

The French solar energy industry — via a consortium of twelve major firms — is currently pushing the French government hard for the adoption of stronger solar energy goals, according to recent reports.

To be more specific, the firms are pushing the new environment and energy minister, Ségolène Royal, to raise the country’s solar energy goal to 5% (of total capacity) by 2025 — represented via at least 25 GW of installed capacity.

Image Credit: French Flag via Flickr CC

According to the consortium — which is composed of Solaire Direct, Exosun, and others — the solar energy sector in the country currently directly employs around 10,000 people, and indirectly employs around another 15,000. With the proposed stronger targets, these numbers could climb significantly — to 25,000 directly employed, and another 35,000 indirectly employed by 2025. So the consortium argues anyways. Though the numbers do sound reasonable.

As it stands now, France possesses about 4 GW of total installed capacity. The country’s current target is to have 5.4 GW of total capacity installed by 2020.

The general secretary of the renewable energy association Enerplan, Richard Loyen, commented that it was well nigh time for the government to take stronger actions to grow the country’s solar sector.

“This is our fourth energy minister since Hollande took power and we are still waiting for the energy transition law. Royal is known to be friendly to solar and proactive, we should be optimistic but now we need some concrete measures. It’s been more than two years without one.”





Given the country’s notable potential with regard to solar energy, the current targets, and the newly proposed ones as well, aren’t exactly awe-inspiring. Especially when you consider that even countries like Iran are beginning to make real moves towards solar energy. Still, better than nothing I guess.

On the subject of Iran’s renewable energy targets, the country has apparently already committed itself to spending $60 million on solar PV targets this year.

That number represents a significant uptick from the previous year’s number ($12 million), and a strong step towards the country’s goal of 5 GW of new renewable energy capacity by the year 2018.









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