RTE published a report on October 25 on how to reach net carbon-neutrality by 2050. This unique approach involved all French stakeholders in the energy sector, including consumers and governmental bodies. This underlines the role of a System Operator providing a neutral technical vision, in order for the government to take its decisions.
This thorough study was made with different energy mixes, scenarios and policies. Thousands of electric configurations, with hundreds of weather hypotheses were performed for each hour of the day for each of the 30 years of the study. The main take-aways are the urgency of a ban of the use of fossil fuels in the national global energy mix, a strengthened energy-efficiency, and the need to increase the share of electricity from 25% today to 55% in 2050. This increase will be guaranteed with an increased security of supply and system security.
RTE suggests that two trajectories are compatible with a carbon neutrality in 2050 . One trajectory supported at 100% by renewable energy (backed by 3 scenarios), which supposes accelerated innovation and technical progress in current energy storage issues a few years. The other trajectory, with a mix of nuclear and renewables (also backed by 3 scenarios); in this trajectory, new nuclear plants would have to be built to replace some of the current ageing ones, and also a strong increase in renewables
More information about the report here.