I agree with the first part but not the second. Up until recently (when a lot of their nuclear went offline) they were one of the lowest emitters in Europe. They were comparable to Sweden and Iceland, which have substantially smaller (and more centralized) populations. I'll agree that thinking nuclear will get us all the way to net zero energy emissions is silly, but let's not undermine the great accomplishments France has made. They have been leagues ahead of the rest of Europe. Even at significantly reduced capacity they are still one of the lowest emitters.
And even those countries in the EU such as Denmark rely on France for electricity imports because no country in the world has any large scale storage solution for renewables.
It would be stupid to put money into storage before there is excess renewable capacity to charge it from. So, people instead put money into generating capacity.
When we have any use for storage, we will build out storage.
