On Friday 10 February, the European Commission announced that it had authorised three French schemes of aid to producers of solar and hydropower energy in France.
The two solar schemes together have a provisional budget of €439 million per year (or a total of €8.8 billion over 20 years) and the hydropower scheme has a provisional budget of €25 million per year (or a total of €500 million over 20 years). These measures will help France achieve its 2020 target of producing 23% of its energy needs from renewable sources.
The European institution concluded that the measures in question would help to increase the share of electricity produced from renewable energy sources, in line with the environmental objectives of the EU, whilst the distortions of competition brought about by the public aid would be limited.
“These French initiatives will stimulate greater use of renewable energy sources and provide legal certainty to the sector, while limiting the use of state support to a minimum”, the Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, stated in a press release. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)