An admission by Nicolas Hulot, the French minister for ecological transition, that his country won’t be able to meet a commitment made by the previous government to reduce the share of nuclear power in the electricity mix to 50% by 2025 has led to fierce criticism by environmental and wind groups.

The previous government under former President Francois Hollande in a 2015 energy transition law set the target to phase-down nuclear energy from around 75% currently, but had not closed a single nuclear power station, nor presented a plan on how to reach the reduction.

“If we want to achieve this goal by 2025, we would need to close between 17 and 25 [nuclear] reactors,” Hulot is quoted as saying by the Le Figaro newspaper, adding that this would not be possible if at the same time shuttering coal plants in order to reach France’s climate targets.

Instead, Hulot now refers to 2030 or 2035 “at the latest” for the reduction of nuclear to 50%, but reaffirmed his goal to close the Fessenheim nuclear plant near the German border by 2022, which has been the object of frequent criticism from German activists as well as the government in Berlin.

The minister has given himself one year to come up with a realistic schedule on how to run down nuclear power in France.

Environmental group Greenpeace criticised Hulot for playing climate change and the reduction of nuclear power off against each other, while French media is speculating about a possible resignation of the minister.

French wind industry body FEE says the probably postponement of the nuclear reduction objective undermines the country’s energy transition targets set in 2015, and calls for Hulot to commit to a “realistic target” of 45% of renewable energy by 2030.

“If the share of thermal [fossil-fired] energies, strongly emitting CO2, has decreased in the French electricity mix in a few years, it is thanks to wind and renewable energies that have been proven their relevance, reliability and effectiveness,” FEE president Olivier Perot says.

The FEE pointed to a study by French grid operator RTE released this week that contains different scenarios for the energy transition, ranging from a moderate to a massive rise in renewables in the French electricity mix by 2035, with a central role given to wind energy.

France ended the first half of 2017 with about 12.5GW of onshore wind in place.

The country under the targets from the previous government has still set its sights on having 3GW of conventional fixed-bottom offshore wind, as well as 26GW onshore and more than 20GW of solar, by 2023. Its floating wind sector could also make a significant contribution to power production by the mid-2020s.