France milestones | Good News for Humankind

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Europe’s first solar panel recycling plant opens in France

By / June 26, 2018 / Good News For Humankind

Solar panel recycling is finally catching up to solar power’s rapid growth, and France is showing the world how it’s done. A new facility in Rousset recovers glass, silicon, copper, and silver from aging panels — materials that can feed directly into making new ones, closing the loop on clean energy hardware. IRENA projects global PV waste could exceed five million tonnes by 2050, making infrastructure like this urgently needed. The plant currently handles crystalline silicon panels only, leaving thin-film recycling unsolved at industrial scale. Veolia hopes Rousset becomes a global template.

Renault to invest more than €1bn in French electric car plants

By Peter Schulte / June 21, 2018 / Good news links

Renault will invest more than €1bn into four plants in France to increase its electric car production in the country.

French state-owned utility EDF to invest 8 billion euros in power storage business

By Peter Schulte / March 28, 2018 / Good news links

“With storage we can smooth out the intermittence of renewable energy and guarantee the balancing of power grids,” EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Levy told reporters.

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France to commit 700 million euros to International Solar Alliance

By Peter Schulte / March 12, 2018 / Good news links

ISA is an inter-governmental organization that aims to mobilize $1 trillion in funds for future solar generation, storage and technology across the world. It has 60 signatories, with 30 of those countries having ratified the agreement.

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France to shut all coal-fired power stations by 2021, Macron declares

By Peter Schulte / January 29, 2018 / Good news links

The 2021 goal sets a more aggressive target than the timeline advanced by Mr Macron’s predecessor, Francois Hollande, who sought to shut down the country’s coal-powered plants by 2023.

France sets out ten-point plan to double wind power capacity by 2023

By Peter Schulte / January 19, 2018 / Good news links

The government said the proposed reforms will cut in half the average time it takes for wind power projects to be completed and connected to the French electricity grid.

France to ban all new oil and gas exploration licenses

By Peter Schulte / June 26, 2017 / Good news links

France plans to terminate the granting oil and gas exploration licenses at home and in overseas territories, as the country aims to increase the share of renewables in the nation’s energy mix.

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France becomes first country to ban plastic plates and cutlery

By Peter Schulte / September 19, 2016 / Good News For Humankind

France’s plastic ban, passed in September 2016, made it the first country to outlaw single-use plastic plates, cups, and cutlery nationwide. The law gave producers until 2020 to switch to compostable, biosourced materials. Three years later, the EU followed with its own sweeping directive — a quiet French precedent becoming a continental norm.

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France gives workers the legal right to disconnect from work email

By / January 1, 2016 / Good News For Humankind

The right to disconnect became French law in 2016, giving workers at companies with more than 50 employees formal protection to ignore emails after hours. It followed a government report on “info-obesity” and a survey finding a third of French workers were using devices for work every single day. A quiet but meaningful reframing of rest.

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France requires new commercial rooftops to be green or solar

By Peter Schulte / March 12, 2015 / Archive of Human Genius

France’s green roof law, passed by Parliament in 2015, made the country one of the first to require new commercial buildings to top their roofs with either living vegetation or solar panels. The mandate was a compromise, narrower than activists hoped, but it turned ecological rooftop design from a nice idea into a national baseline.