2023-04-23 21:01:40
AA/ Tunis / Fatma Ben Amor
French electricity for this winter is trading at the highest prices in Europe, French media reported. Since mid-March, the prices of forward electricity contracts for this winter have started to rise once more in France.
“Now, electricity contracts for the fourth quarter of 2023 are trading at 303 euros per MWh and those for the whole year 2024 reach 213 euros per MWh. This is significantly more than in neighboring countries, ”noted the newspaper Les Echos.
“In Germany, for example, the price of electricity for the fourth quarter of 2023 does not exceed 150 euros per MWh. In Italy and the Netherlands, prices are also much more measured, they fluctuated between 145 and 180 euros per MWh for the same type of contract,” adds the same source.
If French electricity is bought at a higher price, it is because “the market anticipates that France will have to import” this winter, explains Nicolas Goldberg, energy partner at Colombus Consulting, relayed by BFM Business. According to him, for the coming winter, the market predicts that the country will be “very importing”.
Among the other factors that explain these higher prices in France than in its neighbours, BFM Business also mentions the availability of EDF’s nuclear fleet, undermined by “problems of corrosion and aging infrastructure”. “EDF, in charge of the 56 reactors of the French nuclear fleet, no longer produces as much nuclear electricity as before and the difficulties seem to accumulate rather than to be reabsorbed”, indicates one.
In 2022, EDF’s electricity production fell to its lowest level in 30 years, i.e. 279 terawatt hours.
On Friday April 21, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, affirmed on the LCI channel that the tariff shield on electricity, put in place by the French government since October 2021 to limit increases in bills, will still be maintained. two years.
“I give us two years, by the start of 2025, to get out of the electricity shield”, because of the tariffs which remain “very high” compared to the pre-crisis situation, he said. .
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