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French PV lobby group calls for quadrupling of feed-in tariff
French PV proponents held a press conference on Sept. 24 pushing for a quadrupling of a small national feed-in tariff to 60 euro cents (70¢) per kWh as part of a 150,000 PV roofs program. The French Alliance for Photovoltaics (FAP), a lobby group set up in May by French PV producers, wants parliament to include specific language for PV in a national energy law expected to be passed early next year. Eric Laborde, general manager of French wafer, cell, and module manufacturer Photowatt International S.A., says the alliance's goal is 150 MW installed by 2007, doubling to 300 MW by 2010 through the feed-in tariff, which would be paid out for 20
years.
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PHOTOWATT International S.A. |
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Lonely: One of just a few houses in France adorned with PV, where the PV industry is pushing for a higher feed-in tariff.
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This latest move follows a summer of activity, during which the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) sent a letter to French President Jacques Chirac in June seeking support for an increased feed-in tariff (see PI 5/2003, p. 30). Chirac responded in August, saying that a meeting should be set up with Nicole Fontaine, the French minister for industry, also responsible for energy matters. FAP sent a letter to Fontaine on Sept. 19. But Laborde is not too optimistic that the meeting, expected to take place by early November, will be successful. An unfavorable report by Jean Besson, a member of parliament who is headed up a commission on a national energy debate during the summer as a lead-up to the new energy law, was issued on the same day as the PV press conference. It encouraged expanding nuclear power, hydropower, and solar thermal in France, but said PV was too expensive for on-grid use.
Still, FAP is hopeful that a subsequent PV workshop for French parliamentarians in Paris by the end of the year will win political support. The message, says Laborde, will be that without a domestic PV market
»you are going to kill the industry in France.« FAP estimates that 90 percent of the PV modules produced in France are exported.
Although several sources confirm that the workshop organizers want to invite Jürgen Trittin, Germany's environment minister and one of the main supporters of the German PV feed-in tariff, others think the idea might not be advisable since it could upset the sensibilities of French lawmakers.
»Of course the German example is very important to us,« says Marc Jedliczka, strategy manager of Hespul, a French NGO pushing renewables,
»but we have to market it to French politicians, taking into account their psychology.«
France already has a small feed-in tariff started in autumn of 2001. But the tariff, now worth about 14.8 euro cents (17¢) per kWh and twice that in the French overseas departments, has run into bureaucratic problems with the state-owned utility Electricité de France (EDF) since the approval of local EDF offices is required. As of late September, says Willy Bidan of EDF's office for renewable energy connections, 850 requests had been received, of which 514 met all necessary technical specifications, equal to about 1.5 MW. But only 30 requests, averaging about 2.9 kW each, have been approved. The current installed PV capacity in France is about 16.6 MW, only 10 percent of which is grid-connected.
ADEME, the French environment and energy management agency, has also been offering a rebate of EUR4.60 ($5.37) since last year. But capped at 1 MW annually for three years on the mainland and increasing from 1 to 3 MW during the same period in the French overseas departments, the entire amount for 2003 and probably for 2004 has already been used up, says one source. ADEME, which has been repeatedly threatened with governmental budget cuts, did not respond to numerous phone calls and emails requesting details on rebate requests, approvals, and funds
encumbered.
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