After what was reportedly a stormy debate, French senators added an amendment to the Climate and Resilience Law on June 18, allowing mayors to veto plans for wind turbines in their districts if they wish.
Euractiv website quotes Les Républicains Sen. Etienne Blanc, who asserted that light and noise pollution, protection of biodiversity, and impact on bird migration corridors have to be taken into account before launching the construction of a wind farm.
“We had not sufficiently taken into account the recycling of the wind turbine itself, but also the recycling of the concrete,” Blanc said. “It is a question of better establishing consultation and dialogue. Before the environmental authorization is submitted, the project brief must be submitted to the municipality where the plant is to be installed and to its mayor,” Blanc said, and saying that his party was defending a “reinforced democracy.”
Further, he said that if consultation is needed for nuclear power facilities, then the same should be the case for wind turbines. “We cannot be in favor of consultation when it comes to nuclear power and against consultation when it comes to wind power,” he argued.
Les Républicains party scored the highest in the recent local elections. Furthermore, Blanc comes from a region where 15% of France’s nuclear reactors are located, along with key components of France’s nuclear industry. Blanc contributed to a conference in 2017 on “Nuclear Power Plant Life Management,” whose proceedings, including his remarks, were published https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/STIPUB1940web.pdf
Wanting to deny this democratic right to municipalities, Green Sen. Ronan Dantec said that “this kind of amendment brings down any French energy strategy” and undermines the country’s climate goals, insisting, “It is not serious.” And if the democratic right is extended, “We will not be able to meet the needs of the future.”
Green Sen. Daniel Salmon also protested the new measure, claiming it is a “campaign of denigration against wind turbines,” which he called “quite incredible.” He went on: “We have completely missed the target for wind power in France” (he also missed the target that France historically has the cleanest air in Europe, because of its nuclear power.) He also said that he did not care about the birds, because more are killed by cars.
France‘s Ecological Transition Minister Barbara Pompili also threw a fit, calling the right to veto “dangerous.” So much for democratic rights in the Macron government.
This could very well be one of the side effects of the Swiss “no” vote against their CO2 Act, emboldening the various critics of the climate-change radicals, in this case the radicals who want to replace nuclear with junk turbines.
