According to the French electricity grid manager, RTE, France will need an increase of about 65% of its renewable electricity production by 2035 to cover the increase in electricity consumption predicted by the fight against climate change.

In the same vein, and with the objectives of the energy transition as a guide, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the idea of a 10-fold increase in planned solar capacity to 100 GW by 2050 and an increase in offshore wind to 40 GW over the next 30 years.

With these targets in its sights, France has a lot to do. At least so assured industry leaders during the first day of Energyear France, the industry's top-rated networking congress. During the opening of the event, Jules Nyssen, President of the Syndicat des énergies renouvelables (SER), pointed out that to achieve ambitious renewable energy targets, the country must work ambitiously to reduce administrative red tape.

In conversation with Chloé Durieux-Bodin, Partner & Chief Development Officer of Nexun Holding Sas, Nyssen stated that it is necessary to reorganize and think of a new administrative process that thinks and responds in its entirety to the needs of renewables.

"We need to learn to simplify processes," he noted. "Some of our processes need to be reduced. There are some that do not allow us authorization for land and there are many other projects in France that do not have those impediments."

In addition, he highlighted that Europe is currently moving its chips to respond to this and that there is a great movement in which the necessary awareness is being created to accelerate these procedures. Therefore, France should follow this movement.

The day also provided an opportunity to hear the analysis of Philippe Houins, Group General Manager of GreenYellow, Xavier Daval, CEO and Vice-Chairman of Kilowattsol and Thierry Vergnaud, Business Director Onshore of Iberdrola. In their participation, the experts also insisted on the need to eliminate administrative bureaucracy in order to make way for a more appropriate development of renewable energies.

Vergnaud shared the urgent need to speed up administrative processes. According to him, if France wants to become a major reference in the energy transition it must make administrations find more flexibility.

"It is true that France is a country where everyone wants to be. It is a stable country, but we have to be faster and speed up administrative processes," he concluded.

Meanwhile, Houins wanted to highlight the enormous resource potential that some regions of the country have to produce solar energy. But he also explained that although this potential can be exploited even more, there is an issue of community acceptance that still needs to be improved.

"It is necessary to talk to consumers. If the consumer becomes a producer, it's a good thing. But people don't think about the source of energy they use, but if they produce local energy then they will close more the gap between energy production and local consumption," explained GreenYellow's Group General Manager.

Finally, it was Daval who emphasized the need to change the message because “when we talk to the population about renewable energies, they automatically associate it only with solar energy. And although this is one of the most important technologies on the road to energy transition, we must also teach them that it is much more than that. In France, we have many methods to reach the climate targets and it is still possible to meet them," he said.

The CEO of Kilowattsol also wanted to send a message to investors and other foreign stakeholders in the French market. He pointed out that, although the country offers ideal conditions for the development of renewable energies, growing there requires local partners. "We have a great potential, but to exploit that potential we need to work together, hand in hand with French partners," he concluded.