Energy

The dependence of modern societies on fossil fuels should be reduced as rapidly as is technically and socially feasible.

This requires more than changing electricity generation.

Decarbonisation must include:

• transport;
• industry;
• buildings;
• heating;
• infrastructure;
• supply chains;
• agriculture;
• manufacturing.

A major part of this transition will require electrification.

Electricity production must therefore become both deeply decarbonised and sufficiently abundant to support uses currently dependent on oil and gas.

Nuclear energy should remain a major component of the French and European energy system.

France already possesses industrial experience, infrastructure, scientific knowledge, engineering expertise, regulatory institutions, and operational experience in nuclear power.

Abandoning this capability while simultaneously attempting to eliminate fossil fuels would make the energy transition unnecessarily difficult.

Nuclear power should therefore be maintained, modernised, and developed where it provides an effective contribution to a low-carbon energy system.

Europe should preserve the complete industrial and scientific capability required to:

• design reactors;
• construct them;
• operate them safely;
• maintain them;
• manufacture critical components;
• manage fuel;
• manage radioactive materials and waste;
• train engineers and technicians;
• conduct nuclear research.

A strategic technology cannot be preserved if the associated skills, industrial supply chains, research programmes, and technical institutions are allowed to disappear between projects.

Support for nuclear power requires strong safety institutions.

Safety regulation should remain technically independent from both political pressure and industrial operators.

Nuclear engineering should maintain a strong culture of:

• redundancy;
• defence in depth;
• conservative design;
• independent review;
• transparent incident reporting;
• long-term monitoring;
• continuous improvement.

A serious nuclear policy should neither minimise risks nor exaggerate them.

Risks should be analysed technically and compared with the complete risks, resource requirements, environmental impacts, and infrastructure requirements of alternative energy systems.

Renewable energy can make an important contribution to decarbonisation.

Solar, wind, hydroelectricity, geothermal energy, and other renewable sources should be used where they provide an efficient contribution to the complete energy system.

The relevant political question is not whether a technology is labelled "renewable" or "nuclear".

The relevant questions are:

• how much energy does it provide?
• when is that energy available?
• what infrastructure does it require?
• how much land does it use?
• what materials does it require?
• how long does the equipment last?
• what storage or backup systems are required?
• what grid reinforcement is required?
• what is its complete environmental impact?

Technologies should be compared according to the complete system they require, not according to isolated components.

Electricity generation technologies should not be evaluated only by the cost or emissions of an individual generator.

The complete system must be considered.

This includes:

• generation;
• transmission;
• distribution;
• storage;
• backup capacity;
• grid stability;
• interconnections;
• maintenance;
• materials;
• land use;
• redundancy;
• system lifetime.

An apparently cheap source of electricity may require expensive or resource-intensive supporting infrastructure.

Conversely, infrastructure that appears expensive initially may provide stable service for many decades.

Energy policy should therefore favour system-level engineering analysis over simplified comparisons based on a single financial indicator.

Electricity should not be treated as an ordinary commodity.

A reliable electricity system is essential infrastructure.

Generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and demand must therefore be planned together.

The weakening or fragmentation of electricity systems solely to create artificial competition can make long-term planning more difficult.

Public authorities should retain sufficient control to ensure:

• security of supply;
• adequate generation capacity;
• grid investment;
• universal access;
• long-term maintenance;
• environmental objectives;
• industrial resilience.

Energy is strategically important enough to justify strong public ownership and public planning.

I support public control of major energy infrastructure.

At European scale, this could progressively include stronger coordination or public ownership of strategic energy assets and infrastructure.

Energy policy should serve citizens, industry, environmental objectives, and long-term resilience rather than primarily financial markets.

Public energy companies should be evaluated according to the quality, reliability, affordability, and sustainability of the service they provide.

Europe should develop a more integrated energy strategy.

European countries have different resources, industrial capabilities, demand profiles, and electricity systems.

Greater coordination can improve resilience while reducing unnecessary duplication.

European energy policy should include:

• stronger electricity interconnections;
• coordinated grid planning;
• shared strategic reserves where appropriate;
• common industrial programmes;
• nuclear cooperation;
• coordinated research;
• energy-storage research;
• critical-material strategies;
• protection of strategic supply chains.

European cooperation should not eliminate national energy choices, but it should allow infrastructure to operate as a coherent continental system.

Europe should minimise critical dependence on external suppliers for energy and energy technologies.

This includes dependence on:

• fossil fuels;
• nuclear technologies;
• fuel-cycle services;
• electrical equipment;
• power electronics;
• transformers;
• grid-control systems;
• batteries;
• critical materials;
• industrial software.

Energy sovereignty therefore requires industrial policy as well as energy policy.

Europe should retain the ability to design, manufacture, operate, maintain, and repair its own critical energy infrastructure.

Electrification should be a major tool of decarbonisation.

Where technically appropriate, fossil-fuel technologies should be replaced by efficient electrical alternatives.

This may include:

• rail transport;
• electric vehicles;
• industrial processes;
• heat pumps;
• building heating;
• some high-temperature processes;
• infrastructure.

Electrification only provides its full environmental benefit when electricity generation itself is strongly decarbonised.

For this reason, expansion of electricity demand and expansion of low-carbon generation must be planned together.

Transport policy should favour modes that provide mobility with low energy and resource consumption.

Rail should therefore receive major investment.

Electrified rail can move large numbers of passengers and large quantities of goods using efficient shared infrastructure.

Electric cars can reduce fossil-fuel consumption, but replacing every existing car with an electric equivalent should not be the only transport strategy.

Reducing unnecessary car dependency through rail, public transport, cycling, walking, and better urban planning can reduce both energy consumption and material requirements.

The cheapest and least polluting unit of energy is often the one that does not need to be produced.

Energy efficiency should therefore be pursued systematically.

This includes:

• building insulation;
• efficient industrial processes;
• efficient transport;
• reduction of network losses;
• efficient appliances;
• heat recovery;
• better infrastructure design.

Efficiency should be evaluated over the full life cycle.

An efficiency improvement that requires disproportionate additional materials, complexity, or rapid replacement may not represent an overall improvement.

Efficiency alone cannot solve every problem.

If total consumption grows faster than efficiency improves, resource use can continue to increase.

Energy policy should therefore also eliminate unnecessary consumption.

This does not mean restricting essential uses or reducing living standards for its own sake.

It means avoiding obvious waste, unnecessary infrastructure, poorly designed buildings, disposable products, inefficient transport systems, and activities whose resource consumption is disproportionate to their social usefulness.

Citizens cannot make efficient energy choices if the necessary infrastructure does not exist.

Public policy should therefore avoid placing the entire responsibility for decarbonisation on individual behaviour.

For example, asking people to avoid cars is unrealistic where no viable public transport exists.

Asking people to electrify heating is unrealistic where buildings and electricity networks are inadequate.

Collective infrastructure must make low-resource choices practical.

Energy storage should be used where it provides a real system benefit.

Different technologies should be evaluated according to their appropriate timescale and application.

Storage should not be treated as an objective in itself.

Its material requirements, lifetime, efficiency losses, cost, and infrastructure must be included in comparisons.

The same applies to batteries, pumped hydroelectric storage, thermal storage, hydrogen, and other technologies.

Hydrogen can be useful where direct electrification is technically difficult or impractical.

It may have relevant applications in some industrial processes, chemical production, energy storage, or specific transport uses.

However, hydrogen should not automatically be used where electricity can perform the same task more directly and efficiently.

Producing, compressing, transporting, storing, and converting hydrogen requires energy and infrastructure.

Its use should therefore be based on complete system efficiency rather than political fashion.

Oil, coal, and fossil natural gas should progressively leave the energy system.

Their continued use may remain temporarily necessary in some applications during the transition, but infrastructure decisions should avoid creating new long-term dependencies.

Temporary transition mechanisms should not become permanent excuses for fossil fuel consumption.

Energy should remain affordable.

Access to sufficient energy for heating, mobility, communication, and basic living needs is an essential component of modern life.

Energy pricing should therefore protect households from energy poverty.

At the same time, very high or wasteful consumption should not necessarily receive the same level of protection as essential consumption.

Tariff structures can be designed to preserve universal access while still encouraging efficiency.

Energy systems should not be designed primarily around short-term market signals.

Power plants, nuclear reactors, hydroelectric facilities, transmission lines, railways, and industrial infrastructure often operate for many decades.

Their value cannot be assessed only by immediate electricity prices.

Public planning should therefore complement or replace market mechanisms where long-term investment, resilience, or environmental objectives require it.

The objective of an electricity system is to deliver reliable low-carbon power, not to maximise trading activity.

Energy technologies should be compared over their complete life cycles.

Relevant factors include:

• construction;
• extraction;
• fuel requirements;
• manufacturing;
• transport;
• operation;
• maintenance;
• lifetime;
• replacement;
• land use;
• waste;
• dismantling;
• recycling.

Environmental policy should avoid comparisons that count only visible impacts while ignoring the infrastructure or supply chains required elsewhere.

An energy transition cannot be based on the assumption that materials are unlimited.

Copper, steel, concrete, uranium, lithium, nickel, rare-earth elements, and other resources all require extraction, processing, transport, and energy.

Energy policy should therefore favour systems that provide the required service with efficient use of materials and long equipment lifetimes.

Resource intensity matters alongside carbon intensity.

Energy systems cannot be transformed through a sequence of short-term political decisions.

Power plants, electrical networks, industrial facilities, railway systems, and buildings have lifetimes measured in decades.

Energy policy therefore requires stable long-term planning.

France and Europe should maintain technical roadmaps covering:

• generation capacity;
• grid capacity;
• industrial demand;
• transport electrification;
• building renovation;
• research;
• workforce training;
• strategic materials;
• industrial capability.

Frequent political reversals destroy industrial competence and increase the cost of transitions.

Energy policy should rely heavily on scientific and engineering expertise.

Public research should support work on:

• nuclear technology;
• grid engineering;
• materials;
• power electronics;
• storage;
• hydrogen;
• industrial processes;
• energy efficiency;
• recycling;
• life-cycle assessment.

Major energy decisions should be informed by transparent technical analysis and complete physical accounting.

The objective of energy policy should not be to maximise energy production.

Nor should it be to minimise energy consumption regardless of social consequences.

The objective should be to provide the useful energy required for a high quality of life and a functioning industrial society while minimising:

• fossil-fuel use;
• emissions;
• material consumption;
• land use;
• waste;
• environmental damage;
• strategic dependence.

Energy should be abundant where it is useful, conserved where it would otherwise be wasted, and produced using systems compatible with long-term environmental and social stability.