Local communities and renewable energies

Within the context of objectives defined for the share of renewable energies in final energy consumption, local communities in charge of land planning have a crucial role to play. The chairman of a professional body (Syndicat des energies renouvelables, SER) comments this role and outlines the support local communities can get from professionals. An article presents the example of a culture centre in Saint-Malo which integrates two renewable energies and particularly geothermal energy. This experiment could be reproduced almost everywhere on this territory and could inspire other communities. Another example is the construction of a solar plant in the Gard district, the biggest solar concentration plant in France. On the wind energy side, a project of a wind farm in Chalons-en-Champagne is presented and discussed. Bordeaux is developing a heat network for hospitals, originally based on the use of wood as energy source. An article briefly presents the SER (Syndicat des energies renouvelables) and indicates some of its publications