2023-07-18 09:08:17
The government announced on Tuesday a 10% increase in regulated electricity prices on August 1, a sign of the gradual end of the price shield put in place for two winters to reduce French bills.
This foreseeable increase concerns customers “connected to a meter with a power of up to 36 kilovolt-amperes”, ie households, craftsmen, small businesses and craftsmen; large companies do not benefit from the tariff shield.
The last increase dated from February and amounted to 15%, following 4% in February 2022. Since 2021, the regulated electricity tariff, on which some 23 million customers depend, will therefore have increased by 31%.
“Before the increase (by 10%, editor’s note), the bill was around 1,640 euros per year. After the increase, it will be 1,800 euros”, for an average consumer with electric heating who consumes 7 MWh per year, an increase of 160 euros on average, calculates the government.
“From August 1, the tariff shield will continue to cover the protection of French people for more than a third of their bill, around 37% of the electricity bill, which continues to be the level currently provided. which is around 43%”, according to the government, which insists that the electricity tariff in France will remain among the lowest in Europe.
The note might also have been higher since the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) recommended an increase of 74.5% including taxes on noting the increase in energy costs, but the government opted to limit the increase to 10 %.
According to estimates by the Energy Regulatory Commission, electricity prices would have jumped 35% in 2022 and 100% in 2023 if there had not been the protective device of the tariff shield.
According to the Energy Regulatory Commission, some 21.6 million residential customers (out of 34 million) benefited from the regulated electricity tariff as of December 31, 2022. In addition, 1.5 million small non-residential customers were at the regulated tariff on the same date.
Tariff shield
The increase announced on Tuesday is not a surprise. The French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, announced in April that he would put an end to the tariff shield on electricity prices, announced in the fall of 2021 by Jean Castex, Prime Minister, to fight once morest the energy inflation that was beginning even before the war in Ukraine.
“As soon as we have to save money, we must in particular get out of the specific mechanisms that we put in place during the inflation crisis”, “that means that we will have to gradually get out of the tariff shield on energy prices”, by 2024, the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts Gabriel Attal recently confirmed on RTL.
The price of electricity largely depends on natural gas prices in Europe. The reference price of gas on the continent, historically below 20 euros per MWh, rose to more than 300 euros in the summer of 2022, but it has come down significantly, down to around 25 euros at the moment.
The government seized Monday evening the Superior Council of Energy (CSE) on the regulated tariffs for the sale of electricity, in order to obtain its opinion on the next price increase.
The electricity tariff is revised twice a year, in August and February, and the next increase would therefore be expected in February 2024.
The energy shield is very expensive for the state. The government has estimated its cost at the end of 2022 at 110 billion euros between 2021 and 2023.
The reduction in the tariff shield for electricity and gas will thus allow savings of nearly 14 billion euros in the 2024 budget, to which is also added the end of the support window for companies that consume a lot of energy, according to Bercy.
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