🚨️ Solar energy actors create a federation to counter “attacks”

Paris, July 15, 2025 (AFP) - A new association of photovoltaic professionals, the National Federation of Solar Energy (Fnes), has just been launched with the objective of structuring the sector and better responding to the “attacks” against this renewable energy, in the midst of a debate on France's energy future, we learned on Tuesday.

This association, whose statutes were symbolically deposited on June 21, the day of the summer solstice, and which was officially launched on Monday, aims to federate the sector in “all its diversity”: installers, equipment manufacturers, distributors, distributors, distributors, funders, funders, funders, research offices, training organizations, etc.

The association intends to respond to a “strategic need: to affirm a clear and shared vision of the solar sector” while fighting with “pedagogy” against “solar bashing” and “received ideas” or “ideological oppositions” on solar energy, according to its manifesto sent to AFP.

The sector considers itself the victim of “quite unfair attacks, which can be used for political purposes, which are sometimes ideological (...) and which are very short-term”, explains to AFP Floriane de Brabandère, the president of Fnes.

The association aims to complement the action of unions representing renewables, such as the Syndicat des Énergies Renouvelables (SER) and Enerplan, for solar energy.

“The aim is not to replace them”, nor to “add an additional voice (...) in the face of the administration”, underlines the president, but to “put everyone around the table to have debates internally in the sector” on themes such as employment and training.

For several months, critics from the right and the extreme right have multiplied against renewable energies, including photovoltaic, accused of increasing connection costs and the burden on public finances, and of overshadowing nuclear power, which is the majority in France.

The right and the extreme right tried to establish a moratorium on new renewable installations, a measure finally rejected on 24 June by a large majority in the National Assembly during the examination of the “Gremillet” bill on France's energy programming, which must return to the deputies at the end of September.

Without waiting for this deadline, the decree on multi-annual energy programming, which details the objectives by energy, with possible downward adjustments for solar energy, is expected “before the end of summer”, assured the Minister of Energy Marc Ferracci on July 8.

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