Since 2010, France grows a significant energy communities’ network mostly powered
by solar and wind energy project. This dynamic may change with the new direction taken by French government last summer on renewable energy economy. Energy communities implementing solar rooftop and solar shade projects are already affected by this sudden change of tariff.
Finding an economic balance for small scale solar project (9 to 100kWc)
on the northern half of France has always been a challenge for energy communities
but now it’s almost impossible.
Since spring France low feed-in tariff and change call for tender eligible project.
This decision favourite big projects and professional actors instead of local and small scale project which are most of the time develop by EC or local authority
Solar energy has always been a “easy first step” for emerging communities, it’s not any more. Energy communities are now in a blur, wondering where to take action… competition is hard on wind energy, biomass energy needs a lot of skills and renovation is still looking for an economic model.
As a result, we observe that few energy communities are giving up. As an example, two energy communities contact within CIRCUS to become a pilot community have stopped during the process of selection. Both were doing solar energy projects and both face this decrease of feed-in tariff (from 11,26 to 9,12€/MWh). Citizens volunteer, spend time to prospect for potential sites and build economic model but now they run out of steam because they face all kind of difficulties and the main one was economic.
On larger perspective, France transposes the main EU legal provisions on the Renewable Energy Community (REC) and Citizen Energy Community (CEC) by giving a definition but France don't set up favourable framework for these communities, leaving them dependent on the energy market.