(Reuters) – Regulatory burdens are holding back investments in France and hampering its reindustrialization and decarbonization efforts, the CEOs of TotalEnergies and EDF said on Tuesday.

These declarations come at a time when the country is lagging behind in the development of solar and wind farms compared to its European neighbors and is struggling to bring about industrial projects resulting in an increase in electricity consumption.

“I have 500 renewable energy developers in France who manage to painfully produce 300 to 400 megawatts per year (…). In the United States, I built 2 gigawatts in one year. I cannot continue to invest, to have so many people costing me money for such low output,” said TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné at a conference of the French Electricity Union (UFE).

“It’s a problem of space, it’s a problem of regulation, it’s a problem of collective will. Do we want (…) to give ourselves the means in our country to have electricity and to be efficient? If we are not, we will make trade-offs towards countries that are more welcoming,” he added, citing TotalEnergies’ investments in Germany.

“I don’t understand why we are able to renovate Notre-Dame in five years and we are not able to see the same processes to build solar or wind power plants in France,” added Patrick Pouyanné, whose group implements an offensive development strategy in renewable energies.

The CEO of EDF, Luc Rémont, for his part recalled that French electricity consumption had not yet taken off, contrary to the expectations of the operator of the French nuclear fleet, which is banking on transport, industry and data centers to boost consumption.

“It’s hell to invest in France for regulatory reasons. And it’s not just hell for renewables, it’s hell to connect an industrialist (…), to connect a data center , these are administrative delays which are just incommensurable with what we are experiencing elsewhere in the world. We have to take care of that,” he declared.

“All technologies combined (…), if demand does not increase, there will come a time when we will turn off the investment taps, it’s just common sense and it will be all technologies combined,” he said. also said Luc Rémont, while EDF plans to build six EPR2 type nuclear reactors in France and extend its existing power plants.

(Reporting by Benjamin Mallet and America Hernandez, edited by Blandine Hénault and Augustin Turpin)

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