Red flags and black anger. At the call of the CGT, several hundred people gathered Wednesday morning in front of the Cordemais coal-fired power station, about twenty kilometers from Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), to defend its conversion project into a biomass production site. . Both the union and the employees fear that EDF will deliberately increase the cost of the project to make it obsolete.
“This gathering is an important moment, it is notably a question of showing political support for reconversion, which has two major objectives: securing the French electricity network and committing to an energy transition”
, indicated Gwenaël Plagne, CGT secretary of the Central Social and Economic Committee (CSEC) of EDF. The trade unionist hosted a round table on Wednesday in front of the central office where Fabien Gay, communist senator from Seine-Saint-Denis, Marina Mesure, LFI European deputy, Roland Marion, centrist member of the regional council, and three environmentalist and socialist senators from Loire- Atlantic.
Knock on wood
“We are in a grotesque situation: we have a president who is committed to the conversion and an industrialist, EDF, who is doing everything possible to torpedo the project
,” declared the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie, to the press. Binet. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announced on September 24 that the last coal-fired power plants in France would be converted "completely", and "by 2027"
,
to biomass, pellets primarily from wood waste. An announcement which reiterated one of its unfulfilled promises from 2017. The Cordemais site is one of the last two coal-fired power plants still in operation, with the Saint-Avold plant, in Moselle.
Contacted by AFP, EDF affirms that
“work continues to be able to make a decision by summer 2024”
. The
“progressive decarbonization”
of Cordemais was rolled out from 2023, with use of up to
“20% of biomass replacing coal”
, according to the electrician, for whom
“a total conversion to biomass by 2027 requires defining the modalities for regulating such operation
.
The Minister Delegate in charge of Industry, Roland Lescure, for his part, received the trade union organizations in March.
“Work on the exit of coal from Cordemais continues (...) The technical and economic investigation continues between the different economic actors concerned
,” the ministry told AFP. Ultimately, pellets are expected to represent 80% of the power plant's fuel, according to the Ecocombust conversion project. According to EDF, this process would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its installations by 71% compared to 100% coal operation.