French Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Dismiss Bid to Freeze Wind, Solar Permits

• France’s National Assembly quashes a conservative-backed moratorium on new wind and solar projects, keeping its 2030 clean-energy targets on track.

PARIS — In a vote that felt more like a shrug than a showdown, France’s National Assembly on Tuesday snuffed out a proposal to slam the brakes on new wind and solar farms. The amendment, pushed by a clutch of conservative deputies, would have frozen all permitting while the country “re-evaluated” the impact of intermittent renewables.

When the ballots were counted the result was lopsided: centrists, greens and most socialists lined up with President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party to bury the measure. Even a handful of right-wing MPs peeled away, keen to avoid déjà vu. A similar freeze back in 2010 gutted the nascent solar sector, axing tens of thousands of jobs before the policy was quietly reversed two years later.

Jérôme Nury, the Republican behind the amendment, insisted France needs “a pause for reflection” to protect farmland and landscapes from what he calls a patchwork of turbines and panels. But Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher countered that the real risk lies in delay: “Every month we stall, we lock in more imported gas and lose ground on our climate targets,” she told the chamber.

Industry groups breathed easier. They had warned that a moratorium could jeopardise up to €10 billion in planned investment and create a logjam just as developers are racing to help France hit its 42 percent renewables target by 2030. Wind and solar together supplied roughly 14 percent of power last year; official road maps call for tripling photovoltaic capacity and almost doubling onshore wind within a decade.

The wider energy-planning bill, which threads together everything from a fresh batch of nuclear reactors to subsidies for heat pumps, now heads to the Senate in July. Developers can keep filing permit applications in the meantime, sparing banks and backers from another round of what one solar executive grimly dubbed “regulatory whiplash.”

For residents of the windswept Aisne or the sun-soaked Gard, the vote won’t change tomorrow’s skyline. Yet it signals something more durable: in a country often divided over where its electricity should come from, a clear parliamentary majority just agreed that stopping renewables cold is a step too far.