Paris (Platts)--17Nov2008

The French government is to launch an energy efficiency program in the
next few weeks with the aim of drastically cutting energy use and boosting
efficiency, a key minister said Monday at a Paris conference marking the
beginning of European Renewable Energy Week.

"One of the main causes of the current financial crisis has been the
dependence of nations like France on imported energy," the country's minister
of environment, energy and climate change, Jean-Louis Borloo, said.

"We have to break that dependence, and in France we have taken two major
decisions. We are announcing a huge plan to cut our energy use and a major
buildings renovations program, to boost energy efficiency," Borloo said.

"In the next few weeks, we will be announcing a series of detailed
measures, including a target for each French region to install at least 300 MW
of solar photovoltaic generation capacity. We will also be launching our
geothermal energy programs in regions like the Ile de France [around Paris],
Alsace and in the Rhone-Alps, which we abandoned in a moment of madness,"
Borloo said.

He said the measures would help France meet its goals of doubling
renewable energy between now and 2020, including specific plans to increase
generation from solar photovoltaics by 400%, to boost biomass capacity and
geothermal capacity each by a factor of 12 and to have 10 times as much
energy.

The French minister's comments came as the renewable energy industry
throughout Europe was waiting for the outcome of negotiations between the
European Council of Ministers, representing national governments, and the
European Parliament on detailed proposals to meet the EU's climate change
goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2020, to secure
20% of all primary energy from renewable sources by the same date and to cut
total energy consumption by 20%.

Claude Turmes, a Green party European Parliament member from Luxembourg
who is negotiating with national governments on behalf of the parliament, told
the conference that "three tough weeks of negotiation" lay ahead.

And he made a plea to some French politicians to overcome their
opposition to renewable energy at the regional level.

"The regions have an enormous renewable energy resource, but you have to
overcome the opposition from some politicians," he said.