Le Figaro Bordeaux
If France truly wants to achieve its quantified objectives in terms of slowing down the artificialization of land, certain development projects will not be able to see the light of day.
The climate and resilience law set in 2021 an objective of
“
zero net artificialization of soils
”
(ZAN) by 2050, with a halving of the consumption of natural, agricultural and forest areas (ENAF) by 2031. An ambition supplemented in 2023 by a law aimed at facilitating the implementation of the ZAN and supporting local elected officials, who are sometimes helpless in the face of the restrictions imposed by this objective.
In New Aquitaine and more particularly in Gironde, many large-scale projects require the artificialization of hundreds of hectares.
The Grand Sud-Ouest railway project (GPSO) - planning to connect Bordeaux and Toulouse then Bordeaux and Dax by TGV - should artificialize at least 700 hectares of ENAF.
A project for a giant airship factory in the middle of the forest will deforest 75 of them. Finally, the Horizeo construction site is preparing to raze 680 hectares of forest in Saucats in order to install a giant solar park.
So many projects which seem incompatible with the preservation of natural spaces, which is nevertheless essential to stem the loss of biodiversity.
It is in this context that the President of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Alain Rousset, wrote on February 8 to the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, in order to determine the Neo-Aquitaine projects which will or will not be part of the decree listing the projects of national and European scope (PENE), which should thus be able to escape the ax of the ZAN.
The consumption of ENAF by these projects will be
“
shared within the framework of a national package
”
, therefore allowing elected officials to maintain a certain margin of maneuver to develop other local land-use projects.
Read alsoZero net artificialization: in Hœrdt, in Alsace, the bulky hospital wasteland is now worth gold
A giant “obsolete” solar power plant project
In his letter, Alain Rousset hopes that
"
all developments linked to the GPSO project will be taken into account in the estimated envelope
"
, including the railway developments south of Bordeaux (22 hectares), but openly questions the land footprint of the photovoltaic power plant project, being surprised that Horizeo does not appear in the draft decree.
“
Its inclusion in the consumption of space in the Bordeaux metropolitan area would, however, put an insurmountable burden on its residential and economic development capacities ,
”
fears the elected socialist.
“
As for its integration into the regional reserved share, it would have a significant upward impact and would make it difficult to accept the level of effort to reduce space consumption requested from all territories
”
in the region.
Thus, according to Alain Rousset, it is
“
the very future of this project which is called into question
”
, unless it is included in the list of PENEs.
“
I cannot imagine that the State would grant authorization to carry out a project of such size without qualifying it as being of major general interest and without giving the region and its territories the means to reconcile it with the achievement of the land sobriety objectives set by law.
»
Adding a nail to the coffin, the president of the region recalls that the Horizeo project does not correspond to the way in which the region wants to deploy solar panels,
“
prioritizing their creation in already urbanized spaces
”
, and considers the Horizeo model
“
obsolete in relation to the guidelines of the law for the acceleration of renewable
energies
.