PARIS, France: Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate for the next year and far right candidate in the far-right field, has said if elected next year she will end all renewable energy subsidies and withhold wind turbines.
Candidate Rassemblement National Party Le Pen is expected to pick up enough votes for being guaranteed a spot in the second round of the presidential election, after doing so in 2017.
In an interview with RTL radio, she said Wind and solar, these energies are not renewable, they are intermittent. If I became an elected senator, he will put a hold on any construction of new wind farms and I will launch a major project to demolish them. Subsidies for wind and solar, worth an estimated €6 to €7 billion per year, would also be scrapped, she added.
Environment Minister Robert Lué was against Le Pen's statement, tweeting that demobilizing France's wind turbines would deprive us of at least 8% of our electricity production. Le Pen would cause blackouts. Le Pen also stressed that she would back the construction of several new nuclear reactors, upgrade of France's existing fleet and allow the construction of small modular reactors.
In 2020, President Macron offered an economic plan that did not mention renewable energy, but promised to support billions of euros to promote electric vehicles, the nuclear industry and green hydrogen.
Some 75 percent of France's electricity is produced in nuclear plants, making it one of the developed countries with lower carbon emissions to the highest level. However, it is far behind Europe in terms of wind and solar energy.
A strong anti-wind movement, supported by the far left and center right, most notably including Xavier Bertrand, the leading Conservative candidate for the 2016 presidential election, exists in the country.