France, with its long-standing nuclear dependency, has been slower than many of its neighbours to embrace renewable energy options, such as solar, wind and tidal power.

Hear the team from The Local discussing French advances in solar in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below

In September last year, President Emmanuel Macron set out the “main lines” of a bill to accelerate France’s renewable energy programme, as he inaugurated France’s first offshore windfarm off the coast of Saint-Nazaire.

France was the only EU country not to have achieved its objective of 23 percent renewables in its final energy consumption in 2020. In 2021, the final renewable energy share was 19.3 percent.

At its peak on December 8th, 2023, solar energy accounted for five percent of France’s energy output, while wind power supplied six percent, and hydroelectric 15 percent and nuclear 60 percent, according to real-time data from RTE.

Solar capacity is obviously lower in December – in mid-August, the same source records that solar covered up to 20 percent of France’s energy production.

And it’s expected that levels will rise in the coming years. A combination of rising energy prices, government subsidies and increased environmental awareness has seen a big increase in solar generation.

Farms, houses and car parks

The number of French households that generate their own electricity via solar panels has doubled – in June 2023, some 325,939 households generated at least part of the electricity they used via solar panels – a 77 percent increase since June 2022.

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And it’s not just homes – farmers are increasingly adding solar panels on their land, lured by subsidies to help with installation costs and the promise of lowering their electricity bills or making money selling electricity back to the national grid.

Projects that would generate more than 1,000 kilowatts of electricity require a building permit, but farmers are free to install smaller numbers of panels on their land.

Reader question: Can I object to a solar farm near my home?

For those farmers who don’t want to lose arable land (fields with solar panels can still be used for grazing) solar barns are increasingly popular – any barn or agricultural building that has a certain percentage of the surface area dedicated to solar panels can also attract a subsidy to help with building costs.

Mega projects

There will be more large-scale solar farms on the way – a giant 37,000 panel solar farm in Val d’Oise is expected to be operational by the summer of 2024, it will be the largest solar farm in the greater Paris region.

Legislation is set to further accelerate the growth – car parks in France with more than 80 spaces will have to install solar panels within the next five years, as part of a package of measures aimed at boosting the country’s renewables sector. 

Solar panels can already be seen at many autoroute service station car parks and lorry parks, with the panels providing shade for vehicles on hot days while generating electricity.

READ ALSO France set to make solar panels compulsory in all large car parks

SNCF, meanwhile, has announced plans to create solar farms on 1,000 hectares of land at around 30 sites that it owns. It intends to create an installed solar capacity of 1,000MW, production that will offset up to 20 percent of its current use.

And logistics association Afilog has said it plans to install enough solar panels over the next five years to generate up to 1.2GW – enough to provide power for 600,000 people for a year.

Supply and demand

In fact, demand for solar panels has been so high that suppliers and installers are struggling to keep pace. According to industry professionals, panel installation companies struggled with a shortage of parts in 2022, while labour shortages mean that firms are working flat out and still falling behind.

Despite the supply problems, which affect large-scale operations as much as they do private households, the output of solar panels in France is rising.

In the first half of 2023, the pace of photovoltaic panel deployment was sustained, with 1.4 gigawatts (GW) of cumulative power connected to the grid, including 811 megawatts (MW) in the second quarter, the Observatoire de l’énergie solaire photovoltaïque said in a report. This means that 2023 could beat the previous 2021 record of 2.57 GW added to the grid, taking the total to around 17GW.

In addition, projects planned or awaiting connection have reached 18GW, with a “growing backlog on the distribution grid”, suggesting an acceleration over the next few years.

France still has a long way to go to hit its target of 100GW of installed solar power by 2050, but the progress mostly appears to be in the right direction.