Parksun, a French solar mapping service for car parks, has published the first national, store-by-store survey of 16,790 food retailers and specialist stores in France. Three months after a July 1, 2026, deadline set by the APER law, 85% of large supermarket car parks still had no visible solar canopies, according to the survey.
France’s APER law requires outdoor car parks larger than 1,500 square meters to cover half their area with photovoltaic canopies.
“Until now, nobody had measured its implementation,” said Matthieu Mazzega of Parksun. The share of car parks equipped with solar canopies increased from 4.5% in 2023 imagery to 6.7% in 2025 imagery and 9% in 2026 imagery. “We can therefore see that the pace accelerated as the July 2026 deadline approached, and the actual share today is around 8% to 10%.”
Among food retailers, 1,456 of the 1,713 car parks measuring at least 10,000 square meters had no visible solar canopies, representing 85% of the total. Some may have signed contracts before June 30, 2026, allowing them to defer the deadline to Jan. 1, 2028.
A further 5,960 supermarket car parks measure between 1,500 and 10,000 square meters and face a solarization deadline of July 1, 2028.
Non-compliance can result in annual fines of up to €40,000 for the largest car parks and €20,000 for smaller ones, following a formal notice from the prefect.
Progress varies among retailers. E.Leclerc had solar canopies at 16.3% of its car parks, while Système U had equipped 15%, around twice the average. Among specialist retailers, Feu Vert and Norauto were among the stronger performers. Carrefour, Netto, Grand Frais, Castorama and Conforama were among the least advanced, at around 3%.
Parksun estimates that covering half of the 62.8 square kilometers of supermarket car parks covered by the survey would provide around 6.3 GW of solar capacity and generate approximately 7 TWh of electricity annually. Existing solar canopies covered around 146 hectares at the survey’s cutoff date.
Parksun measured each store individually using publicly available data, including retailer store locators, the open-source All The Places project and OpenStreetMap. Car park boundaries were drawn from France’s National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information (IGN) BD TOPO database or OpenStreetMap, including access roads. Solar canopies were identified using IGN’s high-definition LiDAR data and individually checked against the most recent aerial imagery. Only photovoltaic canopies were counted.
The aerial images date from 2023 to 2026, depending on the department, so canopies installed after the images were taken are not included. The survey does not identify exemptions or deadline extensions granted through contracts. Parksun describes the results as a measurement of deployment, not a finding of regulatory non-compliance.
From pv magazine France
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