"The reconquest of our energy sovereignty will go through water"

The discussion of the bill relating to the acceleration of the production of renewable energy has imposed on the public debate a narrow vision of what these renewable energies are.

It would be exclusively solar and wind power.

According to the dogmatic vision that political ecology has gradually imposed in public debate, to be renewable, energies should therefore be intermittent, non-storable, diffuse and difficult to implement, and most often controlled by foreign industries.

The break with the energy history of our country inevitably leads us into a dead end.

While the acceptability of the environmental impact, landscape, price and need for rare raw materials of solar or wind energy is difficult to convince,

Read alsoBig potential for environmentally friendly hydroelectricity, according to researchers

However, France has a great history with a powerful, renewable, and sovereign energy: hydroelectricity.

Totally neutral in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, storable, controllable, economical in rare materials, non-relocatable, free, water is moreover adapted to our existing electrical network and allows great ambitions by optimizing investments.

The French mix, desired since the Gaullist reconstruction of the post-war period, is nuclear power and hydraulics.

It is not Russian gas and coal, combined with the wind from the North Sea, from our German neighbors.

Why absolutely want to break with our strong points to copy a Germanic policy which has demonstrated its bitter failure?

It is the mastery of “water” energy that has saved our electricity.

The simple renovation of our existing dams, in which investments are pending for lack of agreement at European level, would allow this energy to gain 5% in additional production.

Collective platform

While for ten years wind and solar power have captured the full attention of successive governments, without demonstrating their ability to meet the challenges of securing our supply, this winter it was hydropower that enabled it is up to France to save its system, even though this energy has been abandoned for a decade.

The inability of socialist and macronist rulers, and other falsely greenish “strategists”, to impose a French vision of electricity production on the European Union, has led us to see hydraulics as shameful.

However, significant margins for the production of sustainable hydraulic energy exist.

The simple renovation of our existing dams, in which investments are pending for lack of agreement at European level, would allow this energy to gain 5% of additional production (ie half a nuclear unit).

It's major.

The development potential of new hydroelectric works is also well documented.

It would make it possible to gain nearly 15% in production capacity (i.e. nearly 2 nuclear units).

It's major, again.

Finally, some of our facilities could be modernized significantly by increasing both productivity and reducing their environmental impact, such as the formidable Romanche-Gavet project in Isère, which enabled a productivity gain of 40 %.

France must refuse the slightest prospect of competition for its hydroelectric dams, as the repeated injunctions of the European Commission would like to impose.

Collective platform

Such a plan requires political courage.

That of affirming that water is an essential resource for the Nation.

We need to take this seriously.

That it cannot therefore be in the competitive field and that there is no reason for us to be the only European country to entrust our dams to foreign companies.

Because water cannot become an exclusive good.

Environmental issues, land use planning, security of supply for domestic, agricultural, industrial and navigation use, make it a precious asset.

We need to regain control of this resource, in accordance with our national history, rather than discussing technologies that we do not master and that we import.

France must firmly and definitively refuse the slightest prospect of competition for its hydroelectric dams, as the repeated injunctions of the European Commission would like to impose.

If there is one subject on which France's voice must be heard, it is this.

The European Union must abandon this disastrous prospect and the French Nation must protect and develop its energy heritage for the future.

Let's get out of dogmatism and fashion to get back to our strengths.

We need to regain pragmatism and ambition, that of progress and permanent availability, for our energy.

Water is a great way to do this by simultaneously addressing many of the challenges imposed on us by climate change.

France has neither oil nor gas on its territory.

So much the better.

It has wonderful landscapes and major industrial innovation and production know-how, which offer us the power of hydroelectricity.

Let's be proud of it!

Signatories:

Aurélien Pradié, MP for Lot

Raphaël Schellenberger, MP for Haut-Rhin

Jean-Yves Bony, MP for Cantal

Vincent Descoeur, MP for Cantal

Francis Dubois, MP for Corrèze

Virginie Duby-Muller, MP for Haute-Savoie

Vincent Rolland, Member of Parliament for Savoie

Emmanuel Maquet, deputy of the Somme

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