French told to go easy on power
France, which is heading into the winter with just half of its nuclear generation online, can avoid power cuts if homes and businesses curb their consumption, the head of the country’s energy regulator says.
The French government has set a target to reduce energy use by businesses and public authorities by 10% over two years as power production is restricted by plant outages and Russian gas deliveries are curtailed. The technical faults that have hobbled Electricite de France’s (EDF) reactor fleet this year have forced the nation to import electricity, often at skyhigh prices, to keep the lights on.
“If we are good on sobriety, especially in housing and in offices, it will ease the winter,” Emmanuelle Wargon, president of the Commission de Regulation de l’Energie, said on Wednesday. France can avoid rolling blackouts as long as people moderate their energy use, she said.
In the past four weeks, France’s electricity consumption was 6.8% lower than pre-Covid levels as manufacturers used less amid soaring prices, grid operator RTE said on Tuesday. RTE, whose central scenario assumes EDF can raise atomic output to 45GW in January from 30GW now, has warned that the generation curbs could lead to rotating power cuts during severe cold snaps.
The nation’s power problems ripple out to neighbouring countries, which have been forced to use more gas to generate electricity in the absence of imports from France. Recent mild weather has helped, leaving gasstorage sites almost full across the region, but replenishing stockpiles for next winter will be harder without Russian supplies, according to Wargon. “We are working on it with the big companies all over Europe,” she said.
The continent’s energy crisis has prompted governments to spend tens of billions of euros to protect households and businesses amid surging costs. Countries are studying ways to bring down power and gas bills
— from joint purchases to price caps — though proposed Europe-wide measures have been subject to wrangling.
France’s push to cap prices for gas used in power plants —a system already introduced in Spain and Portugal — may be hard to extend to the rest of the continent amid opposition from large users of the fuel like Germany, Wargon said. Countries burning a lot of gas for electricity production might also seek compensation for their higher costs from nations importing the cheaper power.