Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate who reached the run-off vote against Emmanuel Macron in 2017, is running for president of France again and said she would stop all wind power construction and dismantle wind turbines in the country if elected in the April 2022 election.
"I will stop construction of new wind farms and will launch a campaign to dismantle them," Le Pen told RTL France in an interview on Thursday.
Asked about her stance on renewable energy, Le Pen said that wind and solar power are not renewable energy sources; they are intermittent energy sources.
In addition, Le Pen pledged in the interview to scrap all subsidies for wind and solar power generation. These subsidies cost $7 billion-$8.1 billion (6-7 billion euro) every year and burden consumers' energy bills, she added.
The candidate, who lost to incumbent centrist President Macron in the 2017 run-off, also vows to build six nuclear EPRs, European Pressurised Water Reactors.
Le Pen is again expected to make it to the run-off at the presidential election in April, although French far-right television pundit Eric Zemmour polls strongly in recent surveys and takes some of the support that would have otherwise gone to Le Pen.
Both Macron and Le Pen pledge support to nuclear power generation in France, which accounts for around 70 percent of the total electricity generation in the country.
France aims to become a leader in green hydrogen production and reinvent nuclear power by building a small modular reactor by 2030 as part of a wider $34.6 billion (30 billion euro) plan to decarbonize industry and slash emissions, Macron said earlier this week.
France's bet on nuclear power-unlike Germany's decision to phase out all nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster-has been vindicated in recent weeks as Europe's natural gas and power prices hit record highs.
France also led a group of EU member states, including Finland and several central and eastern European countries, who pushed earlier this week for including nuclear energy in the upcoming green investment rules of the European Union.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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