10/02/2011

The French group 'Touche pas à mon panneau solaire' (Leave my solar panel alone), comprised of some 3,700 members, mostly representative of small businesses, has announced it will make a complaint against French energy giant EDF before the European Commission. The group is claiming EDF are guilty of unfair, uncompetitive business practices.

Ariane Vennin, spokesperson for Touche Pas àMon Panneau Solaire, explained the group’s grievances, “EDF is at the heart of energy policy in France and has gross conflicts of interest between subsidiary companies, particularly with distribution networks and the ‘EDF agency purchase obligation’ (EDF AOA). The AOA, like feed-in tariffs in the UK, buys electricity produced by solar panels at a fixed price set by the government.”

Vennin said the group will lodge their complaint on Friday (11^th) before the Commission’s Directorate General for Competition. The French solar network has been hit with a government moratorium on all projects over 3 kW. December’s moratorium has also suspended EDF’s obligation to buy back solar energy under current pricing conditions. In December, the queue of cases waiting to link up with the EDF network had reached more than 5,000 megawatts. 

According to Ariane Vennin, “EDF EN (new energies) is the largest speculator, with 82% of large-scale power projects and 50% of medium projects in the queue”; this, she believes constitutes a conflict of interest.

France is not honouring promises on renewables

A second complaint, also arranged for Friday, to be taken before the Directorate General for the Environment concerns the failure of the French state to live up to its obligations towards renewable energies. Vennin believes that “in clipping the wings of photovoltaics, France has rendered itself incapable of fulfilling its obligations.” The government had committed itself to sourcing 23% of France’s energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Vennin believes few other renewable sources hold as much promise for France as solar, “We have reached the limit in terms of capacity for producing hydro-electric energy at 12%. Wind energy from inland sources is proving ineffectual due to regulatory constraints. Offshore wind farms are a nice idea, but they amount to smoke and mirrors, as we will still have nothing by 2015” she said.

Her group, as well as several non-governmental organisations and unions, are planning to protest on Friday in Paris against the photovoltaic industry’s ‘death sentence.’