French MPs Back Cut to Nuclear Energy Reliance

A law which fixes a target of reducing French nuclear power production from 75 percent of the country's energy supplies to 50 percent by 2025 won approval from the lower house of parliament on Friday.

France, the world's most nuclear-reliant country, has faced increasing costs because of the price of maintaining ageing plants and tighter regulations after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

It also wants to develop its own industrial champions in the renewable energy industry, which is still tiny compared to other European countries such as neighbours Germany or Spain.

Its much-delayed energy transition law, steered by energy minister Segolene Royal, is being reviewed by the national assembly under a fast-track procedure, to counter the thousands of amendments proposed by opposition MPs.

Although the bill skirts the question of how the reduction in the share of nuclear energy is supposed to happen -- it does not single out any reactor for closure, for instance - it caps nuclear electricity capacity at the current 63.2 gigawatts.

That would force EDF, which operates all of France's nuclear reactors, to close an equivalent capacity when it launches the 1.6 gigawatt next-generation Flamanville reactor, due in 2016.

Royal said earlier this week the utility could choose to close another plant than Fessenheim, France's oldest and the one Hollande had promised to shut down.

The whole bill is expected to be approved next Tuesday before being sent to the country's upper house early next year, with the view to final adoption in the spring, in time for a high-profile climate conference hosted in Paris in 2015.

The bill also introduced a goal to halve the country's energy consumption between 2012 and 2050, with a midway target of a 20 percent cut by 2030, thanks to tax rebates on insulation work and bonuses for electric car buyers.

France's energy deficit -- the difference between the money it spends on energy imports such as oil and gas and the money it earns on exports such as electricity -- amounted to 66 billion euros ($83 billion) in 2013.

That compares with a wider trade deficit of 62.2 billion euros.

(1 US dollar = 0.7910 euro)

(Reporting by Emile Picy; Writing by Michel Rose; editing by Keith Weir)