An EU-induced Turn to a Market-based French RES Governance?

The standard image of France is one of an energy mix and climate policy dominated by nuclear energy, hence making it different from most other European countries. Furthermore, probably related to this rather ‘simple’ initial energy structure (and a language barrier), the climate and energy politics of France has been comparatively little researched. This makes it an interesting case to study in-depth. By 2016, France still derives about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. But important changes are taking place, including the increasing role of renewables in the energy mix and a new turn towards more market-based approaches and mechanisms. A capacity market mechanism is to be introduced in the winter 2016-2017. We aim to understand what factors have influenced the several types of re-orientation of French policy. We discuss questions such as, first, to what extent and how was the French renewables support scheme and capacity adequacy mechanisms shaped by the EU and the larger European environment? The expectation is for all countries to be increasingly influenced by the EU over time, as the EU has gained increasing competence in this issue area. It is interesting to study how this plays out in the case of strong and independent France. Second, to what extent and how has the national political field steered the development of the French renewables support scheme and capacity adequacy mechanisms? We expect the political field to have particularly high importance when the issue is politicized and when the parliament have much formal decision making power. Third, it is interesting to study the role of segmentation in this case, as political steering can be expected to be challenging in a situation with a big and dominant state-owned company (i.e. the EDF).