‘A beautiful idea’: This French town is making its cemetery a source of solar energy
Residents in Saint-Joachim can join this unusual community energy scheme for just €5.
A French town is installing a canopy of solar panels over its cemetery that will distribute energy to local residents.
The idea didn’t start with solar. Saint-Joachim is located in the middle of the Brière marsh - a vast peat bog north of the Loire estuary.
When it outgrew its churchyard cemetery in 1970, a new graveyard was created to the east of the town’s main island, a drop from six to zero metres above sea level.
Upsettingly for families with loved ones buried there, that means the cemetery often floods in winter. Draining the ground would be a constant battle with the wetland, so Saint-Joachim’s mayor proposed covering the site to stop it from filling up with rainwater.
Since the town can also get too dry in summer, the second idea was to reuse this water for the parched grass of the adjacent sports club and other greenery.
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Solar panels were the final touch - a way to make electricity from an otherwise redundant surface.
Saint-Joachim has been ahead of the curve on renewables; it installed photovoltaic panels on municipal roofs back in 2012. So when the project was suggested in 2021, the town decided to offer this new solar electricity to residents.
The solar canopy will be a communal source of energyThe cemetery location seems like the most striking part of the solar project, with eye-catching architectural mock-ups of how the 1.3-megawatt (MW) canopy will look.
But an even more unusual aspect is the equal way the energy will be distributed.
This is what attracted Éric Broquaire, local resident and president of Brier’energie association to take up his role. “To me, it was very interesting to have a common project,” he tells Euronews Green.
Most energy initiatives take a top-down approach, but the Saint-Joachim cemetery project is co-built by the citizens. Briérons (as locals are called) were contacted with a letter asking for their views and 97 per cent were in favour.
In the town of around 4,000 people, some 420 residents have officially registered their interest in joining the project. For an entry fee of just €5, they will eventually have a share in the energy it produces.
Broquaire expects that when others see the project begin, they’ll be rushing to sign up too. A prototype is being installed in a 180 square metre patch of the 5,000 square metre cemetery this weekend (18 March), giving everyone a clearer idea of what the much-anticipated design will look like.
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