What impacts on the French Solar market?

Two texts were published in the French Official Journal on the 21st of April 2020:

• Decree n° 2020-456 dated 21st of Avril 2020 on the French Pluriannual Program for Energy
• Decree n° 2020-457 dated 21st of Avril 2020 on National Carbon Budgets and National Low Carbon Strategy

They came into application on the day following their publication.

The PPE (Pluriannual Program for Energy) sets the targets for the development of Energy production of renewable origin for Continental Metropolitan France until 2028 and gives visibility on the main CRE tenders.

In the previous version of the PPE, the targeted installed capacity for the 31/12/2023 was 20,6 GW. The current PPE sets for this same date 20,1 GW, with a very slight decrease that is also confirmed in the 2028 targets.

For the 31/12/202, the following target is set

• Low option: 35,1 GW
• High option: 44,0 GW

On the 31st of December 2019, installed capacity in France was 9,436GW according to the “Panorama de l’électricité renouvelable 2019” with an average connection to network of 890 MW over the three last years.

In order to meet 2023 targets, average connections to network will need to ramp up to an annual value of 2 666 MW par an, and to 3GW per year for the 2023-2028 period in the Low option.

The target of the new PPE is therefore extremely ambitious: What measures will allow France to meet it?

The new PPE gives a first indication with a provisional timetable for the future CRE tenders, until 2024. This timetable plans for :

• for ground-mounted solar: two 1GW tenders per year starting second semester 2019
• for roof-mounted solar: three 300 MW tenders per year.

Theoretically, planned tenders should allow 2,9GW of yearly connection to the network, i.e. 108% of the connections necessary.

Looking closer, for ground-mounted solar, the capacity called for has increased regularly over the last tender periods. Since the 5th period, tenders call for 850MW and are met with a full subscription. But, CRE is already showing some delay versus current PPE as the on-going tenders are still calling for 850MW and not 1GW.

For roof-mounted solar, the situation is not as good. The rhythm of three periods of 300MW is already in place since 2017. Periods 6 to 9, each calling for 300MW were on average subscribed at 49,6%. In order to deal with this low subscription rate, period 10 was divided into 2 periods of 150MW.

The new PPE is clearly counting of ground-mounted solar project to meet its global target for 2023 and 2028. We will keep you posted on any new development on the French market for roof-mounted Solar, in particular with the expected publication of RE2020.

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