More than 400 pages of analyses, reports, graphs and thirty proposals to be implemented quickly to prevent France from crashing into the energy wall. This is the content of the report released this Thursday, April 6. The document will date. Not only does it shed harsh light on the bad choices or prevarications of our leaders, but it also shows the extent of the efforts to be made to put the country back on the right track. The rapporteur of the text, Antoine Armand, returns for L’Express to this pharaonic project which now awaits France.
The investigation report on the energy independence of France does not mince its words against the political class. There is even a question of “duplicity of the current government”. At the end of the hearings conducted, is there no party or personality that finds favor in your eyes?
The words to which you refer are those of the chairman of the committee in his foreword. What I have tried to do in the report is to put the statements in front of the actions taken. And when you look at the last thirty years, you see that there are not many political groups that have not created a gap or even a gap between their declarations and their results. This is problematic for two reasons. First of all, it has an impact on the country’s energy model. Then, this raises a democratic question, that of coherence. Let’s take the example of the 2015 law: in the end, its biggest flaw is not so much to have set a new energy mix, it is to have proposed it with the idea of developing renewable energies without really going through in action. You have the right to send a message that is more favorable to renewable energies than to nuclear energy. But if then nothing happens on the ground, there is a problem. You just made believe it was possible.
A few days before the publication of the report, on the occasion of a report with parliamentarians, you wanted to “harden the situation” on several points, including the closure of Fessenheim and the stopping of the Astrid reactor project. Is it because these are two unforgivable mistakes?
It was above all a matter of changing the text so that the tone was the same from one part of the report to another. I haven’t changed anything fundamentally. About Fessenheim, what seems undisputed to me today is that in 2017, the closure was not inevitable. At the time, the issue of increasing the lifespan of power plants was already in the news. Certainly, it would have required heavy maintenance work. And the latter would no doubt have caused the shutdown of the reactor for a long time. However, they would then have allowed the site to operate for years. The closure deprives us of carbon-free electricity with an initial investment already amortized and expenses related to maintenance work which would also have been profitable.
Regarding Astrid, this is a sensitive decision taken in closed circles. We auditioned many actors at the time. The question they asked themselves was the following: after several study phases, do we move on to the construction of a high-powered demonstrator to do research and then consider moving to an industrial scale? ? But how to commit ten billion euros when the EPR was still not in operation, and the evolution of uranium prices in the world meant that there was not really any concern? on future supply? Many thought that an installation of such power, with the costs it represented, did not seem legitimate. However, the great strength of this kind of so-called 4th generation reactor is to be able to use the 300,000 tonnes of depleted uranium that are on our soil to operate, thus giving us autonomy in this area for several hundred years. What I regret quite strongly is that there was no alternative to stopping. For example, the development of a smaller reactor would have made it possible to continue the research work undertaken.
The investigation report presents around thirty proposals aimed at raising the bar and defending our energy independence. But some of these solutions go through Europe. This is the case, for example, of the Arenh mechanism, which requires EDF to sell part of its nuclear production to competition, at a price defined by order. This system has become toxic for EDF. How can we plead our case with our neighbors as there are so many disputes between nations?
Indeed, EDF’s debt was relatively stagnant until 2021 before jumping 20 billion euros last year due to the drop in nuclear production but also the Arenh. On the European subject, the task is immense and difficult, but it is quite simply a question of defending the vital interests of the country, our nuclear industry and its 220,000 jobs, our ability to have clean, sovereign and carbon-free energy.
Watch the news: in a few weeks, Agnès Pannier-Runacher succeeded in bringing together a dozen countries on the nuclear alliance and in response, a dozen countries formed an opposition. This moment is revealing: we are in a union and of course we cooperate, but each is also defending its vital interests. So we, too, have to defend our positions very strongly, find alliances to move forward. For example, we have the Euratom treaty which was signed in 1957. Today, it lives on, fueled at the very least by a few million euros of investment. Originally, it was to allow European states to cooperate in civil nuclear power to have a great strength in terms of research, innovation and development of power plants. So I say: “chick let’s go”. I think we can make progress on this subject.
In his foreword, the president of the commission of inquiry asks to create a personal responsibility for the ministers who do not bring together the collegiate scientific advisory bodies created by law. Are you in favor of it?
I have never seen an elected official or a political leader who failed to enforce his decisions in his administration when he really wanted to. However, the political leaders interviewed tried to discard themselves on their administrations or their cabinet by saying: “I was not told” or “I was not warned”. It is irresponsible for a minister to express himself in such a way. In the report, I propose that the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices (OPECST) can take action on its own, that there be more lively debates, scientific expertise. But it is the political responsibility to draw inspiration from it. It wouldn’t occur to anyone not to seek the advice of physicians when choosing whether or not to reimburse a given medication. More generally, scientists must inform the whole of society and it is the responsibility of political leaders to consult them formally or informally.
The work to implement the thirty recommended solutions is enormous. Doesn’t finding funding risk slowing down the expected surge?
This is obviously an argument. It shines through in the auditions conducted and will not fail to return. But energy is a lexical issue. It comes before everything else. Without clean energy, we will never achieve our climate goals. And moreover, we will never give an interesting model to India, China, Africa or other developing areas. Then, without clean, relatively abundant and competitive energy, we will not be able to aim for the reindustrialization of the country, and therefore to maintain our comfort of life or our social model. Over the past thirty years, we have seen defenders of energy sobriety, nuclear power and renewable energies clash. What the report shows – but also the forecasts of RTE or other organizations – is that we do not have the luxury of choosing between these chapels. Each must stop harassing the other. It is vital if we want to become aware of what I call the energy wall.
What would be your greatest satisfaction at the end of the publication of this report?
My first satisfaction is to have succeeded in transforming 150 hours of hearing – sometimes depressing and worrying – into thirty proposals for the next thirty years. My mission is not to cry over spilled milk or accuse my predecessors, but to illuminate the path of leap from an energetic perspective. Then, of course, my satisfaction will be all the greater if proposals are taken up. But before that, it will be necessary to realize that the situation implies a republican consensus and the great gathering of the three chapels mentioned above, which only have meaning in a world that does not exist, that is to say a world of energy abundance in which the urgency is not to get out of fossil fuels.