The decree giving legal recognition to these areas is expected to be issued at the end of September and will be implemented over a two-month period starting around December. As a result, PV projects larger than 3.5 MW will either have to be installed in an acceleration zone or go to a steering committee to obtain a construction permit.
The process will come into effect at a time when the municipalities (whose responsibility it is to identify these areas) have not yet defined the acceleration zones. The document supporting the definition of the acceleration zones will be sent to the municipalities in July 2023, so they have less than six months to organise public consultations and local deliberations to assess the potential strengths in order to take into account sufficient space to Achievement of the regional renewable energy development target (the target itself has not yet been defined) and validation of the mapping by the REC.
Lack of local resources
"Even if municipalities receive these documents, they have many other prerogatives", emphasised Eric Bonnaffoux, Development Director of OX2 France, a large renewable energy developer, in an interview with PV Magazine. He believes that the deadlines are too short, especially in small towns or villages, where mayors often have extra activities and municipal teams are not necessarily trained in renewable energy issues. "The belief that the acceleration zones will be ready in December is an illusion".The developer asked for a trial period so that the municipalities could properly study the designation of accelerated zones and carry out an in-depth
identification process. According to him, these zones could be ready "as early as June 2024".
This is because, if nothing is done, the projects that will have to be submitted for licences from December 2023 onwards will in fact(in the absence of accelerated zones) be linked to the "out-of-area" procedure, and will therefore have to be adopted before the accelerated zones can be approved. Steering committees are authorised. "We don't know the composition of these committees or how they operate," explains Eric Bonnaffoux.
Lack of horizontal vision
"The risk is also that the definition of acceleration zones does not take into account connectivity", the professional emphasised. The fear is twofold. These zones may be too far away from the connecting station and therefore incur additional costs or connectivity delays. But they could also simply have source substations with too little available capacity and end up hosting too high a density of projects for the local network. "If we can't connect the projects in the space provided, we won't accelerate the development of renewable energies," recalls Eric Bonnaffoux. All in all, professionals regret the lack of consideration of cross-cutting issues in the French green energy development strategy.
For example, in impact studies, biodiversity studies are separated from landscape studies, and acoustic studies are not taken into account. Similarly, the issue of access to land is separated from the declared objective of deploying photovoltaic power. These laws set out new measures in the regulatory lasagna that legislators claim to want to simplify. Authorities have asked municipalities to do more, but have not allocated more resources to the task.
Eric Bonnaffoux explains, "We have noticed a slowdown in the review of documents by the Energy Pole Commission, sometimes delayed by six months,because they lack the staff and the means to deal with all the requests." He denounced the lack of staff in certain Services. This can delay projects even if the land is secure and the environmental studies are ready.
